If the thought of robots short-circuiting your career is keeping you awake at night, you might be experiencing FOBO – the fear of becoming obsolete.



This rising form of anxiety is leading many workers to worry about being left gathering dust as their high-tech counterparts advance.



With AI and robotics evolving at lightning speed and taking over roles once occupied by humans, job sec rity is increasingly uncertain.



This fear is not confined to blue-collar jobs – it spans sectors including finance, law, healthcare and education.



In manufacturing, robots are already revolutionizing the industry by efficiently and safely handling repetitive tasks like assembly and packaging.



In a similar situation, customer service representatives are witnessing the rise of AI chatbots and virtual assistants that manage inquiries, resolve issues and provide support without human intervention, potentially reducing demand for traditional customer service roles.



Retail workers are also feeling FOBO, as automated checkout systems and self-service kiosks become more common, handling transactions and managing inventory independently, which could lead to fewer jobs for cashiers and other retail workers.



In the legal field, AI tools are increasingly taking over tasks such as legal research and document reviews that were traditionally carried out by paralegals and junior lawyers.



Financial advisers are concerned as algorithms capable of analyzing market data, managing investments and providing tailored advice become more prevalent.



Robo-advisers could reduce the demand for human planners, making some feel their financial advice could soon be unplugged.



In education, AI-driven platforms are delivering personalized learning experiences that might impact traditional teaching roles, leaving educators worried about being powered down.



The healthcare sector faces potential competition from advanced robotic systems that perform complex surgeries with high precision and fewer complications.



Graphic design and language translation are not immune either as AI tools create basic designs and manage straightforward text translations, potentially impacting entry level roles and leaving some feeling their creativity is being replaced by code.



Overall, it is hard to picture an industry or role escaping the robotic revolution.



The roots of FOBO lie in the rapid pace of technological advancement.



Historically, workers had time to adapt to new technology and gradually learn new skills.



Today, the tech revolution is advancing so quickly that most workers struggle to keep up. It leaves many feeling stuck in neutral while technology zooms ahead, leading them to worry about being left behind in a cloud of robotic dust.



Automation and AI promise increased efficiency and cost savings but also pose significant threats to traditional employment structures.



While millions of traditional jobs are likely to be displaced, millions of new ones are expected to be created as the job market adapts to new technologies.



Although this shift presents opportunities, it is not guaranteed that everyone will transition smoothly-especially in industries where automation takes the lead.



FOBO can also impact one’s sense of self- worth as many people view their careers as



central to their identity.



The idea a machine might perform their job better and without breaks can significantly undermine confidence, leading to chronic stress, anxiety and – in severe cases – mental health issues like depression.



Yet the worry of becoming obsolete does not have to short-circuit motivations to advance in the workplace.



Instead of viewing automation as a threat, consider it an opportunity to reboot your career.



Staying relevant in an automated world requires continuous learning and a robotic commitment to skills development.



Workers should be encouraged to upgrade their abilities, focusing on technical skills like coding and data analysis as well as soft skills such as creativity, emotional intelligence and critical thinking – areas where humans still hold a distinct advantage over machines.



By remaining curious, resilient and ready to reboot the learning process, careers can stay charged and fulfilling.



Embracing this robotic revolution with a proactive mindset will help ensure workers remain not only relevant but indispensable in an ever-evolving job market.



Ultimately, the future of work is not about humans versus machines but about humans and machines working together to create a more efficient, innovative and exciting world. Overcoming FOBO will allow us to move into a future where both humans and robots can work seamlessly in sync – without glitches, short-circuits, or downtime.

A young boy dressed as a businessman wears a paper bag with a happy face on it.

Expert-Speak: Why FOBO Will Force A Massive Career Reboot

You’re working in a large corporation, and you’ve been given two choices.



Choice one guarantees a profit of $1 million in the next 12 months. It’s safe, predictable, and secure.



Choice two, however, gives you the opportunity to make $1 billion. But there’s a catch: your chance of success is only 1%.



Mathematically, the answer seems obvious. One percent of $1 billion is still $10 million; 10 times more than the first choice.



But what would you choose?



This question was posed to me and a bunch of successful entrepreneurs at an event in Los Angeles by Astro Teller, CEO of X, the radical innovation arm and moonshot factory of Alphabet.



They all voted for the second choice. Which, if you are a venture capitalist, I’d expect, as the evidence is clear; extreme bets pay off in the long run.



According to CB Insights, 67% of venture capital (VC)- backed startups fail, which means that great VCs rely on a small percentage of their investments making exponential returns. They quite literally rely on the one in 20 bet, bringing back a 100 or even 1,000-fold or more returns.



The mindset is home runs matter, strikeouts don’t.



Missing out on the next Google or Airbnb is the real failure, not losing on the ones that didn’t work out. For VCs to thrive, therefore, they have to take the 1% bet.



And thrive they do, because as at May 2024, there were over 1,200 unicorns — startups valued at over $1 billion; with a combined value of approximately $3.8 trillion.



This is of course all great if you work in venture capital. But what about, if you, like I used to, work in corporate?



For me, there was no way I would have ever chosen option two. And neither would my peers. It wasn’t because we didn’t understand the math; it was because we were afraid.



Because corporates are structured to focus on certainty.



I wasn’t paid to fail or take radical bets. I was paid to deliver consistent, predictable results.



So, I know from experience just how difficult it is to push for bold, unconventional ideas in large, legacy organizations. The resistance to change can be overwhelming. Those corporate antibodies make any wannabe intrapreneurs, like I once was, feel like outcasts.



Which is why 99% of corporate leaders choose the safe bets, over and over again. It’s about self-preservation and avoiding career-ending mistakes.



All well and good you might say, if it wasn’t for the fact that predictable companies are unlikely to survive the next decade.



If you think this sounds extreme, consider this. In 1974, the average lifespan of a Fortune 500 company was 75 years. Today, only 12% of those companies remain, and the average lifespan has plummeted to just 15.



What’s pushing them out of business? The answer is obviously venture capital.



An industry that has mastered the art of the 1% bet has learned to disrupt corporates that are too scared to take risks. VCs fund innovative startups that move fast, embrace uncertainty, scale quickly and push incumbents to the brink.



So, the reality for corporations today is therefore stark. Playing it safe is the riskiest choice of all. In an era of rapid disruption, certain bets will never create the breakthroughs needed to stay ahead.



Most corporate leaders I think know this, but are simply too afraid to take the 1% bets. It doesn’t matter how much data, research, or logic is applied. Fear of failure drives their decision-making.



But if the evidence is so clear, that corporates need to take more risks to remain relevant, what can be done to encourage their leadership teams to take risker decisions?



One answer is to change the incentives, to reward executives for driving innovation programs within their organizations, in a similar way to how Alphabet has with its X company.



But the paradox here is that this requires a change in mindset from the very people who created the problem in the first place.



The board.



And to get them to change their opinions about incentives and governance can only really happen if you can get them to believe that the company is facing an existential crisis.



Not easy. But boards that realize the adverse risks of being too prudent and therefore work with their executives, to encourage their intrapreneurs to take the 1% bets, are far more likely to survive than those that don’t

Finding the potential to improve their profits

Expert-Speak: The 1% Bet, Are You Afraid To Take It?

Do you think everyone should work at least one customer service or retail job in their life?



Home Depot seems to think so. The retailer will now require all its in-office and remote corporate employees to work an eight-hour shift every quarter, according to an internal memo seen by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-08/home-depot-ceo-orders-corporate-staff-to-work-in-stores-four-times-a-year?srnd=homepage-americas&amp;embedded-checkout=true" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>.



Though site and client visits from corporate staff are within the normal standards of operation, quarterly requirements are a new step for the company, which makes more than $150 billion in annual revenue and employs 450,000 people. The policy’s success,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/10/09/home-depot-asks-corporate-employees-to-get-out-of-their-offices-and-work-8-hour-shift-in-stores/">writes senior contributor Jack Kelly</a>, will largely depend on its implementation. Poor in-store training for corporate employees could lead to inefficiencies, and if not taken seriously as a learning opportunity, it could also build resentment.



Apart from Home Depot and DoorDash, which implemented a&nbsp;<a href="https://careers.doordash.com/blog/wedash-doordash-employee-program-how-does-it-work/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">similar program in 2022</a>&nbsp;that required corporate employees to complete at least one food delivery a month, few retailers have set requirements for “on the ground” work.



It is an unusual move, yes, but it comes at a time when rising labor activism has ignited unionization movements across industries.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/union-petitions-filed-with-nlrb-double-since-fy-2021-up-27-since-fy-2023#:~:text=Who%20We%20Are-,Union%20Petitions%20Filed%20with%20NLRB%20Double%20Since%20FY,Up%2027%25%20Since%20FY%202023&amp;text=From%20October%201%2C%202023%20to,the%20Agency%20received%202%2C593%20petitions." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Union petitions</a>&nbsp;with the National Labor Relations Board have nearly doubled since 2021, and are up 27% in the last fiscal year.



Philadelphia Home Depot employees voted to unionize in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-12/home-depot-philadelphia-store-to-vote-on-union-in-first-for-chain" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">2022</a>, and just this year workers at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-27/apple-reaches-labor-contract-deal-in-maryland-union-says" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Apple</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/04/17/cvs-pharmacy-union" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">CVS</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/04/amazons-first-us-labor-union-moves-to-affiliate-with-teamsters.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Amazon</a>&nbsp;have unionized.



Happy reading, and hope you all have a lovely week!



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-work-smarter">WORK SMARTER</h2>



Practical insights and advice from&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;staff and contributors to help you succeed in your job, accelerate your career and lead smarter



Looking for new ways to increase your&nbsp;productivity at work?&nbsp;Here are some&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/10/10/best-productivity-apps/">apps</a>&nbsp;that can help.



‘Your immediate work circle is enough,’ and more&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/niritcohen/2024/10/10/3-networking-myths-that-are-holding-your-career-back/">networking myths</a>&nbsp;that are&nbsp;holding your career back.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/10/11/managers-are-glossing-over-workplace-issues-and-pushing-toxic-positivity/">What to do</a>&nbsp;if your&nbsp;manager is glossing over problems.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-careers-q-amp-a-tammy-sun-ceo-and-founder-of-carrot-fertility">CAREERS Q&amp;A: Tammy Sun, CEO and Founder of Carrot Fertility</h2>



&#8220;More than half of Americans get their healthcare through their jobs, and it&#8217;s an important part of how businesses are able to drive valuable business outcomes. [Providing menopausal support] is not philanthropy, it&#8217;s not do-goodery. It&#8217;s a smart business decision to invest in your women leaders and in your company,&#8221; says Tammy Sun.Carrot Fertility



Ahead of World Menopause Day on October 18,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;sat down with Tammy Sun, founder and CEO of Carrot Fertility, a fertility coverage program that companies can offer as a benefit, to talk about how menopause is affecting women (and men) in the workplace and how folks can advocate for increased benefits or support at work. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.



Carrot recently released its annual&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-report-reveals-millennial-workers-are-more-informed-than-ever-about-menopauses-impact-on-their-careers--and-theyre-ready-to-take-action-302262052.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Menopause in the Workplace report</a>. What was one piece in that research that stood out to you the most?



One of the most surprising things for me is that about a third of Millennial women are already experiencing symptoms related to perimenopause. That is an enormous number. And upwards of 70% anticipate and believe that this is going to be a very significant workplace challenge as they move forward through perimenopause and into menopause. So the awareness, education and the de-stigmatization of this issue is contributing to our ability to really understand the depth of the problem. This data is important for us to make visible to both employees and employers that this is an issue. I’m heartened to know that more are feeling empowered to speak out about this.



Definitely. How are employees moving past this conversation between themselves and bringing it up to their employers?



I think there’s a lot of employee advocacy in this space. A lot of women are using women ERGs (employee resource groups) inside companies, and they’re bringing the topic into those ERG groups, organizing other women at work. These topics and conversations go straight up to the management team and even the boardroom [in the ERGs], so I think that is a very powerful trend that’s happening now.



What’s a piece of advice that you have for folks in these ERG groups to really be heard by management?



One of the things that holds people back from being heard is the sense that HR doesn’t care, or that it won’t really matter because ‘I’m just a single person.’ I think that’s a misconception about HR that is important for HR leaders, people leaders, benefit leaders, to react and respond to. It’s about hearing from employees about what they want because they only want to buy products and put programs in that people will actually use. So I think most people would be surprised to know that you would find a very open, receptive and communicative audience with your company’s benefit leaders. If even in that case you don’t feel comfortable bringing up the conversation on your own, if there’s not already an ERG, you can think about making a group of women at work and organizing a small group of colleagues to raise the issue together as a group. I’ve seen that work really well for menopause, but also for broader fertility benefits like IVF and egg-freezing where employees, both women and men, will self-organize and bring an issue to the benefits leader and sometimes the CEO. So don’t be afraid to approach your benefits team.



That’s an excellent point—how do you bring men into these conversations?



Yeah, men are also an important part of this conversation. It’s about advocating and supporting other women, but also themselves. I mean, men go through hormonal changes as well. And there’s issues around fertility––half of all infertility is male-related infertility. We have a low testosterone program in addition to a menopause program that supports men as they age and as their hormones change as well. And so I think it’s a really exciting time for women, but also an exciting time to make sure that we are being inclusive of men and that they have the opportunity and responsibility to engage in their healthcare. At the same time, I do think that lots of men would be willing and excited to join conversations that sponsor and promote better healthcare for women. They should want that! Because it’s better for their business. If you care about your business outcomes as a man, then you should care about how your women colleagues are being supported.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-touch-base">TOUCH BASE</h2>



News from the world of work



Boeing fights its union:&nbsp;After&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/10/09/boeing-withdraws-offer-made-to-striking-factory-workers-no-further-negotiations-planned/">withdrawing its “last and final” offer</a>&nbsp;to its striking workers on Wednesday, it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-files-unfair-labor-practice-charge-against-striking-union-2024-10-11/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">filed an unfair labor practice charge</a>&nbsp;against the union with the NLRB, saying that the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers failed to bargain in bad faith.



PLUS: The aerospace firm also announced Friday&nbsp;it would be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/10/11/boeing-will-cut-about-10-of-its-workforce-amid-strike-and-financial-struggles/">laying off about 10% of its workforce</a>. A company spokesperson told the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-layoff-plan-suggests-deep-white-collar-job-cuts/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Seattle Times</a>&nbsp;it would not be laying off striking employees, meaning the initial cuts could be among white-collar staff, including engineers and nonunion salaried employees across the organization. And now it’s looking to raise&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-files-registration-statement-securities-stock-sale-up-25-bln-2024-10-15/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">$35 billion in funds</a>&nbsp;via stock and debt offerings, as well as new credit.



Female leadership suffers when private equity firms invest, according to a new study by consultancy LCap of 1,424 European companies. On average, the percentage of women in leadership&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-15/female-leadership-suffers-when-private-equity-firms-invest" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">tumbles to 16% by the end of a private equity investment period</a>, down from about 20% at the start. While the percentage decrease can be from new leadership brought in, only about 8% of new C-suite executives brought in by the firms were women.



Social security benefits will increase 2.5% in 2025 to reflect cost-of-living increases.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2024/10/10/social-security-benefits-will-increase-in-2025-to-reflect-cost-of-living-adjustments/">Retirement benefits</a>&nbsp;could increase, on average, about $50 per month.



The largest federation of labor unions in the U.S. and the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/shalinjyotishi/2024/10/10/labor-meets-science-policy-nsf-and-afl-cio-announce-partnership/">announced Thursday they would partner</a>&nbsp;to&nbsp;better&nbsp;understand the impact of technology, including AI and automation, on their jobs.&nbsp;The first of its kind, the AFL-CIO/NSF partnership could serve as a model for how unions work with other federal agencies on workforce development.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-number-to-note">NUMBER TO NOTE</h2>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-500">500</h2>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
That’s the number of employees TikTok said it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/bytedance-cuts-over-700-jobs-malaysia-shift-towards-ai-moderation-sources-say-2024-10-11/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">laid off</a>&nbsp;on Friday. Though it’s a fraction of the 110,000 people the social media giant employs, cuts were mostly done in its content moderation department in Malaysia in a shift toward AI.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-"></h2>
</blockquote>

Pick n Pay Stores Ltd. Launch New ‘QualiSave’ Brand Cut-Price Supermarket

Can Corporate Hack It On The Retail Floor?

Coaching programs that rely on artificial intelligence are cheap, accessible and increasingly popular for practicing tough workplace conversations or getting tips for negotiating a raise. But privacy questions and skepticism over the quality of non-human answers could slow adoption.



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You’ve trusted artificial intelligence&nbsp;to plan a vacation itinerary, write a cover letter for a new job and even&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2024/02/14/dating-apps-ai-chatgpt-tinder-hinge-bumble-match/#:~:text=YourMove%20AI%20bills%20itself%20as,and%20generate%20dating%20photos%20compatible">flirt on your behalf with your next date</a>. But would you trust it with career advice?



A growing number of businesses are betting you will. Coaching or workforce learning platforms like BetterUp, Multiverse and LinkedIn—as well as startups like Valence and Wisq—are only some of the AI-powered coaching chatbots entering the market.



During a time of layoffs and budget cuts, as companies seek to help workers hone their interpersonal skills, AI is emerging, ironically, as a cheaper and more accessible alternative to traditionally high-cost human coaching.



AI coaching refers broadly to a variety of apps and programs that are powered by generative AI technology and provide advice about tricky situations or career challenges. Users query a chatbot and get real-time, interactive feedback on everything from the best way to negotiate a raise to how to search for a new job to how to delegate work or give feedback to teammates.



This is still a relatively niche business—Gartner’s HR practice tells&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;it is still too small of a market to measure—but both employers and workers are starting to embrace it. Its emergence comes at a time when more people and companies are seeking help with career development, and understandably so. In an economy where fewer people are quitting or changing jobs, workers are nervous about promotion opportunities. Meanwhile, many also feel frustrated by a lack of hands-on management training during the pandemic or concerned about how AI is already reshaping job descriptions and making some of their skills obsolete.



Some 47% of companies surveyed by LinkedIn for its&nbsp;<a href="https://learning.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/business/en-us/amp/learning-solutions/images/wlr-2024/LinkedIn-Workplace-Learning-Report-2024.pdf" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">2024 Workforce Report</a>&nbsp;said they are investing in career mentoring and coaching for their workforce, and a survey by Gartner found that 42% of employees would be comfortable asking an AI coach about the next steps in their career. Another survey by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.intoo.com/us/blog/unlocking-organizational-success-report-press-release/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">INTOO</a>, a career and outplacement firm, found that nearly half of respondents aged 21 to 26 think they get better advice from AI, including ChatGPT, than from their managers.



So it’s no surprise that startups are attracting investments and companies are rolling out new products. For example, in June, Menlo Park, Cal.-based Rising Team closed an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rising-team-raises-8-million-series-a-and-introduces-personalized-ai-leadership-coach-for-building-high-performing-teams-302165554.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">$8 million</a>&nbsp;seed round that it’s using in part to add an AI leadership coach,&nbsp;<a href="https://risingteam.com/#aRTiHelps" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">aRTi</a>, to its team performance platform. Management AI coaching tool Wisq, which has raised over $40 million in funding since May 2021,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wisq-launches-first-personalized-ai-guide-for-managers-302113194.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">launched a new program</a>&nbsp;aimed at mid-level managers in April.



“Employers are all over it,” says Ujjwal Singh, chief technology and product officer at London-based apprenticeship startup Multiverse, adding that 64% of its customers now use its AI career coach. That’s up 15% from last quarter. “They’re really pushing this hard.”



Yet even as demand rises, AI career coaching faces hurdles to widespread adoption, including concerns some workers may have about the privacy of employer-provided sessions and questions about the quality of tools’ responses. More customized responses rely on personal information users may be hesitant to give—and on the real-life experiences that human coaches can draw upon when counseling clients.



Some early research suggests that in some scenarios, AI coaching can be as effective as the human version. For example, a study&nbsp;<a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0270255" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">published</a>&nbsp;in the journal PLOS found that research groups using human coaches and those using AI coaches were just as efficient when it came to reaching set goals.



But at this point, skepticism is still warranted. “We&#8217;re a long way from a typical human being wanting [coaching] from a machine,” says Joseph Fuller, a Harvard Business School professor who co-leads its Managing the Future of Work initiative. But, he adds, given the rapid improvements in AI, “it’s pretty dumb to bet against them.”



This much is for sure:&nbsp;AI coaching is a lot cheaper for employers than the human variety, which, with an average cost of&nbsp;<a href="https://coachingfederation.org/app/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">$244 an hour,</a>&nbsp;has typically been provided only to companies’ top performers or senior executives. (For comparison, Wisq charges between $50 and $150 per user per year for a combination of human and AI coaching.) It&#8217;s also designed to be accessible, with several AI coaches integrated directly into apps most workers use daily, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.



In 2023, the American market for coaching was worth $14.2 billion, according to market research firm IBISWorld. During the pandemic, Zoom enabled coaches to take on remote clients, expanding their client base further, points out Carlos Cuadrado Ortiz, an associate principal and coach at consulting firm Korn Ferry.



AI could be a big accelerator for the industry, enabling companies to provide coaching to more employees and human coaches to serve more clients by using AI tools to address the simplest questions. That explains why some big career businesses are adding AI features or acquiring smaller startups. LinkedIn, for instance, launched an AI virtual coach in October that helps users find new jobs personalized to their profile. The AI coach’s answers pull from large language models that are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariagraciasantillanalinares/2024/06/13/linkedin-releases-ai-resum-and-cover-letter-help-for-premium-users/">trained</a>&nbsp;on advice provided by a handful of human coaches who earn royalty fees.



In March, BetterUp, a coaching and mental health platform that has reached&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2021/06/07/venture-funding-for-mental-health-startups-hits-record-high-as-anxiety-depression-skyrocket/">unicorn</a>&nbsp;status (it was last valued at $4.7 billion in 2021 according to Pitchbook), acquired Practica, an early AI coaching provider, to grow its own AI offerings. (The company still offers human coaching to all users.) The new AI services include a “role play” function that lets users practice conversations with a voice-prompted chatbot about thorny topics, such as asking for a raise or sharing critical feedback. The AI might tell a user, for example, that they sounded defensive when delivering bad news or too nervous when making a case for a promotion.



Meanwhile, startups like Toronto-based&nbsp;<a href="https://www.valence.co/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Valence</a>&nbsp;and Paris-based&nbsp;<a href="https://coachello.io/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Coachello</a>&nbsp;added AI chatbots to their online coaching services last year. Grettel Seiger, a leadership development manager based in Basel, Switzerland, started trying out Coachello with a small group of employees a month ago and says it’s been a way for colleagues to get help earlier in their careers without the high cost.



Those who’ve started using it have opened up about the dilemmas they face, she adds, noting “you don’t feel judged” like you might with some managers. Asking the AI chatbot follow-up questions has also helped her define exactly what help she needs. “The whole process became cathartic,’’ she says.



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But good coaching,&nbsp;and good advice, is rarely about quick answers; it relies on probing questions—or in AI speak, collecting more data. “Coaching is about guiding someone in a certain direction, [or] nudging people,” says Multiverse’s Singh. “I don’t think AI is quite there yet” when it comes to complex, relationship-focused questions, he adds.



At a broad level, some AI tools have been known to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2024/07/11/this-ai-powered-coach-catches-hallucinations-in-other-ai-models/">make up answers</a>&nbsp;or at times give&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2024/07/23/target-employees-hate-its-new-ai-chatbot/">wrong information</a>. Massara Almafrachi, a third-year law student at Western New England Law School, says that asking an AI chatbot for career advice has resulted in confusing and irrelevant answers. “I’m already confused about my career,” she says. “AI [only] throws me in a bigger loop.”



Katie Kirsch, the founder of a coaching company called Lume and a 2024&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/katie-kirsch/">Forbes&nbsp;Under 30 listmaker</a>, says she may one day incorporate AI features into her platform. But earlier this year she tried out AI tools herself and found the advice lacked nuance: &#8220;The kinds of conversations [my human coach and I] had felt impossible to replace in the AI format.&#8221;



AI chatbots, after all, are only as powerful as the quantity and quality of the data they have been fed, and how well the tools are built. To provide a personalized approach, AI coaching companies must successfully coax users to divulge specific, personal information, says Harvard’s Fuller. “You end up having this chicken-or-the-egg problem of not having access to a lot of data until you’ve got the quality that you can only get by having a lot of data,” he says.



Then, there’s the question of sensitive information. Most AI coaching companies offer their services directly through employers, which could make users leery of asking what they really want to know. How many employees who want advice on leaving a job or dealing with a toxic boss would feel comfortable entering those questions into a chatbot offered by their employer?



AI coaching providers respond that confidentiality agreements prevent the tools from sharing personal details with employers, and any reports generated for employers show only aggregate and anonymized results. (Some, such as BetterUp, also say users can opt out of having their data train language learning models, while others, such as Valence,&nbsp;<a href="https://support.valence.co/en/articles/9100961-valence-s-ai-coach-nadia-introduction-and-faqs#h_06ffdb4c89" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">say</a>&nbsp;it does not use employee conversations with its chatbot to train its models.)



Meanwhile, “workers are generally aware that a company-provided tool is tailored to enhance the company’s goals, which don’t always align with theirs,” says Hatim Rahman, management professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, who studies AI’s impact on employment.



Despite potential privacy fears and the fact that AI coaching models still have a lot to learn, tech-savvy workers are increasingly embracing them. “There is no judgment built directly into the tool,” says Michael Woodward, director of New York University’s Coaching Innovation Lab. “It’s purely mathematical.”



In addition to Gen Z workers, another unexpected demographic has become an unlikely power user of AI coaching: Middle-aged men. Multiverse reports it is seeing the most growth among people aged 40 and up; as of June, 46% of eligible employees older than 40 used Atlas, its AI-powered coaching service, compared to only 31% of users 24 and under.



Men in their 40s are one of the largest groups using BetterUp’s AI coaching feature, too. “These are [groups] where coaching may still be stigmatized,” says Moritz Sudhof, vice-president of AI at BetterUp. But if given the chance to share their career dilemmas with a chatbot, they’re actually “ready to open up and bare their weaknesses and problems.”

Chatbot concept. open AI, Artificial Intelligence.

Your Next Career Coach Could Be A Chatbot

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Musician Beyoncé Knowles is continuing her foray into the country music world with the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-5Ew0Lp2LC/?igsh=NHRmeXF4bm42Y3Zn&amp;img_index=1" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">launch</a>&nbsp;of a whiskey brand called “<a href="https://www.sirdavis.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">SirDavis</a>” under the LVMH empire, entering the same industry that made her husband a billionaire and could push the superstar musician closer to the same title depending on how it performs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



Beyoncé took to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-5Ew0Lp2LC/?igsh=NHRmeXF4bm42Y3Zn&amp;img_index=3" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Instagram</a>&nbsp;Tuesday morning to announce the launch of the brand, holding a glass of dark liquid and captioning the photo &#8220;DAVIS IN MY BONES.&#8221;



The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sirdavis.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">first images</a>&nbsp;released of the beverage show a custom leather case with a ribbed glass bottle inside, featuring a logo with the famous horse Reneigh, who was first featured on the cover of Beyonce&#8217;s &#8220;Renaissance&#8221; album.



A&nbsp;<a href="https://trademarks.justia.com/974/74/sirdavis-97474719.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">trademark</a>&nbsp;application filing for the brand, which includes the&nbsp;<a href="https://uspto.report/TM/98566322" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">tagline</a>&nbsp;“The future of whisky is here,” was filed in June by Moët Hennessy, a subsidiary of mega luxury goods brand LVMH.



Beyoncé had an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/beyonce-knowles/">estimated net worth</a>&nbsp;of $760 million in May, built on her music career and other ventures like her now-defunct Ivy Park clothing line with Adidas, a collaboration with fashion house Balmain, perfume Cé Noir and production company Parkwood Entertainment.



The size of Beyoncé’s stake in SirDavis wasn’t immediately clear, and representatives for the star and LVMH did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for more information Tuesday.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">What To Watch For</h2>



SirDavis could bring Beyoncé even closer to billionaire status if it takes off like other celebrity alcohol brands, including those of her husband, billionaire Jay Z. He is estimated to have made&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abigailfreeman/2021/02/26/heres-how-much-jay-z-made-on-his-ace-of-spades-deal-and-how-it-stacks-up-against-kylie-jenner-kim-kardashian-george-clooney-rihanna--cashouts/">$300 million</a>&nbsp;selling half of his luxury champagne brand Ace of Spades to LVMH in 2021 and&nbsp;<a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/jay-z-bacardi-end-multibillion-dollar-fight-over-cognac-venture" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">$750 million</a>&nbsp;selling a majority of his stake in D&#8217;ussé Cognac to Bacardi.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



$89.99. That&#8217;s how much a 750ml bottle of SirDavis sells for on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sirdavis.com/our-cocktails/houston" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">brand&#8217;s website</a>. Bottles are expected to ship as soon as early September.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">Tangent</h2>



Alcohol is often a lucrative business for celebrities. Aviation Gin, the company fronted and partially owned by Ryan Reynolds,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/08/ryan-reynolds-aviation-gin-sale-diageo" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">sold</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/17/diageo-to-buy-ryan-reynolds-backed-aviation-gin-for-610-million.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">to Diageo</a>&nbsp;in a 2020 deal valued at $610 million, and George Clooney&#8217;s Casamigos tequila brand was valued as high as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/business/george-clooney-tequila-casamigos-diageo.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">$1 billion</a>&nbsp;when it sold in 2017 (how much the actors personally made on the respective sales is unclear). Sean &#8220;Diddy&#8221; Combs&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/arts/music/diddy-sean-combs-deleon-sale.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">earned</a>&nbsp;nearly $1 billion from his relationship with Diageo for his Ciroc vodka and DeLeón tequila brands, according to a court filing obtained by The New York Times (Combs and Diageo&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/06/27/diddy-liquor-dispute-diageo-dropping-rapper-who-sued-for-racial-discrimination-unfair-promotion-of-liquor-brands/">parted ways</a>&nbsp;last year). Other big names with their own brands include Dwayne Johnson, Kendall Jenner, Robert de Niro and Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranson of &#8220;Breaking Bad.&#8221; Beyoncé, who released her first country music album Cowboy Carter earlier this year, is not the first musician in the genre to launch a whiskey—she&#8217;s joined by Daris Rucker (Backstage Southern Whiskey), Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley (Old Camp Whiskey), John Rich (Redneck Riviera), Jason Aldean (Wolf Moon Bourbon) and Willie Nelson (Old Whiskey River), among others.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">Forbes Valuation</h2>



Beyoncé was ranked 36th on Forbes&#8217; list of Power Women last year and at No. 45 on this year&#8217;s list of America&#8217;s wealthiest self-made women. She was estimated to have a net worth of $760 million as of May. Her husband,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jay-z/">Jay Z</a>, has an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion as of Tuesday, making him the 1,331st richest person in the world. His wealth was built on his music career and significant investments in alcohol, art and tech. The LVMH conglomerate is the parent company to brands like Louis Vuitton, Moët &amp; Chandon, Tiffany, Dior, Sephora, Bulgari and dozens more. Its chairman,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bernard-arnault/?list=rtb/">Bernard Arnault</a>, has a net worth of $189.1 billion and is the world&#8217;s third richest person.

2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards – Show

Beyoncé Launches Whiskey Brand SirDavis—As She Nears Billionaire Status

If you find yourself wrestling with self-doubt and confusion at work and questioning your grasp on reality and your own decisions, you might be facing a modern twist on workplace bullying. Gaslighting is rapidly becoming the preferred method of bullying for those who ignored the memo that intimidation and disrespect no longer have a place in the modern workplace. 



The drive for safer and more respectful work environments makes obvious bullying – like yelling, insults and public humiliation – easy to spot and quick to condemn. Workplace bullies are therefore evolving, adopting more subtle and underhanded strategies such as gaslighting to obscure their malicious ways. 



Gaslighting involves a deliberate pattern of deception and misinformation during which the manipulator uses denial, contradiction and false information to make the victim doubt their own memory, judgment and sanity, in the process eroding their confi dence and self-trust. 



Common tactics include withholding information, trivializing feelings, twisting words and spreading lies about a victim. The term ‘gaslighting’ comes from British playwright Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light, in which a husband manipulates his wife into questioning her sanity by dimming the gas lights in their sitting room. 



Employing a single gaslighting tactic does not equate to workplace bullying. For gaslighting to qualify as bullying, it must involve repeated tactics over time, deliberately aimed at causing harm or distress to the individual. 



These manipulative ploys set the stage for a variety of gaslighting examples in the workplace. An employee brings up a previously discussed agreement or decision made in a meeting only for their colleague to fl atly deny that the conversation ever took place. 



A manager purposely withholds important information from an employee, causing them to miss deadlines or perform poorly, and then blames them for not being proactive or resourceful enough. When an employee raises concern about being overloaded with work, their supervisor tells them they are being too sensitive or overreacting, suggesting they are not cut out for the job if they cannot handle the pressure. 



In discussions, a colleague twists an employee’s words or takes them out of context to make it seem as though they are not communicating e ectively or saying things they never said. For those inclined to engage in workplace bullying, gaslighting o ers appealing advantages over more overt methods. 



It allows perpetrators to maintain a facade of innocence, often portraying themselves as helpful or concerned and thus avoiding accountability. Subtle manipulation can be masked as constructive criticism, leadership or just tough management, making it socially acceptable in many professional contexts. And by undermining someone’s perception of reality, the perpetrator gains signifi cant control over their victim, often leading to a sense of superiority and satisfaction. 



The consequences for victims of gaslighting are profound and varied. Psychologically, it can lead to anxiety, depression and a signifi cant loss of confi dence and self-esteem. Professionally, it can result in decreased productivity, engagement and even career derailment. And socially, victims might isolate themselves to further exacerbate their vulnerability. 



Addressing gaslighting in the workplace is challenging because its hidden tactics make it hard to spot and stop. Victims doubting their own experiences and the di because its hidden tactics make it hard to spot and stop. Victims doubting their own experiences and the culty bystanders have in recognizing the behavior only add layers of complexity to tackling the issue head-on. And in environments where competitiveness, ambiguity and hierarchical power dynamics are culty bystanders have in recognizing the behavior only add layers of complexity to tackling the issue head-on. 



And in environments where competitiveness, ambiguity and hierarchical power dynamics are prominent, gaslighting can thrive. Such cultures often discourage open communication and vulnerability, making it di cult for victims to speak out.



In addition, when performance is prioritized over employee wellbeing, subtle forms of manipulation can be overlooked or even unintentionally encouraged. The sly and secretive nature of gaslighting suggests its prevalence in workplaces will increase, necessitating a more proactive approach from those occupying leadership positions. 



Raising awareness about what gaslighting is and its e ects can empower employees to recognize and report incidents. Implementing clear policies that specifi cally address psychological manipulation and provide clear procedures for reporting and investigation can also deter potential perpetrators. Establishing robust support systems, including access to mental health resources and confi dential counselling, can aid victims in recovery. 



And promoting a culture of transparency, respect and empathy can reduce the occurrence of gaslighting by emphasizing positive interpersonal relationships and communication. As traditional bullying behaviors are pushed underground by increased awareness and intolerance, gaslighting has become a preferred tactic for those seeking to exploit and dominate others. 



Eradicating its presence in the workplace will always start with illuminating conversations and actions that promote trust and respect at work.

Businesswoman having discussion with male coworker

EXPERT-SPEAK: The Silent Burn Of Gaslighting Igniting Our Workplaces

Expert insights into how we are surrounded by noise 24/7/365 and it&#8217;s affecting our ability to think clearly and manage stress levels, often leading to expensive mistakes, at work and in life. 



Globally, employee stress levels are high. The Gallup State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report connects this to high inflation, economic complexity, and ongoing uncertainty. Chad, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, Guinea and Togo are cited as having the most stressed employees in Africa – although not as high as workers in East Asia with 61% citing extremely high daily levels of stress making them, says Gallup, “the most stressed-out workers in the world”.



African countries also feature high on the list of most distressed nations in the world, according to the Mental State of the World Report 2023; South Africa, Egypt and Angola are all experiencing high levels of distress. South Africa is on par with the United Kingdom in terms of how distressed people are, at 35%.



“Stress levels vary significantly across the African continent based on factors such as socio- economic conditions political instability and infrastructure chal- lenges,” Simone Berger, Behavioural Specialist and Founder at Univa- tion, tells FORBES AFRICA. “It’s difficult to generalize stress levels across an entire continent though – I don’t believe Africa’s levels are notably higher than other continents at this time. The world is changing rapidly and there is global uncertainty and overwhelm.”



There is, as Mel Harvard, Director at Harvard Ink, points out, “Pandemic after-effects, global information overload and crisis fatigue to deal wi h as well. People just don’t know how to deal with stress either.”



Or they do know how to deal with stress better than in the past – the Gallup Negative Experience Index has remained steady at its record 33 high reached in 2021 – but they are struggling to keep up with the rate of change and constant noise that accompany the stress.



Leanne Glanville, Mindfulness Facilitator and coach at the Sandton Yoga Lounge johannesburg, explains to FORBES AFRICA: “Between everything that goes on in our lives, minds and at work, everything is fast-paced and hectic. We made bad decisions in the moment because we’re not thinking, we’re not aware.&#8221;



Which is why people click on that SMS from the ‘Postal Service’ asking for an address update and a payment to ensure that a parcel – one that they don’t remember ordering – arrives safely. Or they click on that link in an email from a leading bank because it’s threatening to close their account. Or they agree to send millions of dollars to an un- known account because they’re so busy worrying about letting people down, they’re not hitting the pause button and asking the right questions.



Enter mindfulness. Currently an industry predicted to be reportedly worth more than $300 million by 2031, mindfulness has become profit- able and problematic. It works beautifully – the science is proven and the value exceptional – but as a recent Vox article so eloquently pointed out: “Mindfulness without worker power is capitalism at its worst.” Look inside at how to manage stress rather than outward at the causes of that stress.



In commercial language: corporates need to buy into the mindfulness credo if they want to reduce the risks that poor mindfulness and awareness introduce to their businesses and their data. 



“At the heart of cyber resilience lies the potential of human capital,” says Gilchrist Mushwana, Director and Head of Cybersecurity Service Line, BDO South Africa.



All it takes is just one click to crack open a cor- porate reputation or cost it a fortune in lost cash or fines. When people are under pressure to deliver, miss bathroom breaks and multi-task, they aren’t thinking clearly. In fact, research found that jump- ing between tasks takes a 40% hit on productivity and drops the average IQ by 10 points.



“Mindfulness is about being present in the mo- ment and can help everyone in all spheres of life,” says Glanville. “It helps people focus on the task at hand, whether it’s a meeting or an email, and reduces the risk of them making mistakes. It allows people to step out of autopilot and respond to situ- ations with more clarity and calm.”



Companies have a responsibility beyond just making money and improving market share. They need to cultivate skills that include, says Dr Chris Heunis, Founder at TBi, “social and emotional intelligence and purposeful behaviors”.



It is also not hard to achieve. As Mushwana concludes: “Given that over 90% of cyber threats exploit the human factor, focusing on human elements within technological processes becomes crucial. Training employees in mindfulness can heighten their awareness and help them manage the psychological stresses of continuous digital engagement, reducing the risk of security breaches driven by human errors.”

Some meditation before work

Hit The Pause Button: Expert-Speak On Mindfulness At Work

When I worked in large corporate environments, I often sought feedback. Sometimes, the feedback really hurt. But did it make me a better leader? Looking back, I’m not sure. Experience, experimentation, and learning from numerous mistakes were, in my opinion, far more influential.However, this article isn’t about how feedback can sting personally with questionable upsides; I’m actually proposing that companies reconsider relying on consumer feedback altogether.



Because, while it’s commonly assumed that feedback o  ers valuable insights, time after time, reality often paints a di  erent picture. Consider this: in a large Royal Automobile Club (RAC) survey conducted in the United Kingdom (U.K.) in 2017, a staggering 91% of drivers self-identifi ed as law-abiding. However, when comparing this self-assessment to concrete data from traffic cameras, 48% of drivers exceed the speed limits on highways. 



Fortunately, the U.K. government chose to ignore driver feedback and spent billions of dollars trying to fi nd ways to discourage speeding and improve road safety.So why do we often see huge discrepancies between self-reported beliefs and observed behaviors?



Social desirability bias, where we try to present ourselves in a positive light, is one possible explanation. Selective memory is another. In fact, there are many, many reasons why our opinions don’t align to reality.But it’s not just governments that need to be aware of the risk of making decisions based on people’s opinions. Companies do, too.For example, one of the most widely reported new product failures ever, was ‘New Coke’, a slightly sweeter drink that Coca-Cola introduced in 1995.Despite the fact they had feedback from hundreds of thousands of people that they preferred the new fl avor, when it was introduced on to supermarket shelves, no one bought it. 



It just didn’t sell. And people complained in their thousands, which ultimately led to the original version being reintroduced.What’s di  erent from the RAC survey though, is that this was a blind taste test, so bias should not have been a factor.So why didn’t people run out and buy New Coke in droves when those same people had said it tasted so good?Poor marketing? A deep-routed love for an iconic American brand? The fact that taste tests obviously do not align to how people actually consume drinks?



There are many theories, but it’s my view that business leaders shouldn’t waste time trying to unpack the differences between stated preferences and observed realities. Instead, they should focus on understanding what people will do in real-world scenarios by designing and running experiments that test actual behaviors in real-world settings.



The story of Five Guys showcases what I mean perfectly. If you have never had a Five Guys burger, I thoroughly recommend it, although you may need a second mortgage as they are expensive.Jerry Murrell started the burger chain back in 1986 in America by “finding a place where the store is out of the way, and where nobody can see it”. He didn’t advertise, and he only used premium ingredients.No market research. No focus groups. No consumer surveys.



His view was: “If we can put it where it’s hard to fi nd, but we still get people coming, then we know we’ve got something.”



Later on, as they were considering franchising, they tested market demand by placing a sign outside one of their stores, which read: “If you are in a hurry, there are a lot of really good burger places nearby.”Crazy? No, it was genius.Instead of trying to encourage people to eat their product, they actively dissuaded them.



Yet the queues still stretched out the door. And from that simple set of tests, Murrell knew he had a product that could be rolled out everywhere.



Compare and contrast to the likely outcome if he’d taken the more orthodox route and asked people whether they would be happy to pay infl ated prices for a product that was similar to others on the market, just with longer wait times?



Instead, by testing his ideas in the wild, observing behaviors, and adapting as necessary, Murrell was able to create a multi-billion-dollar franchise and develop a new market sector with premium stores in pretty much every major city around the world.So, stop asking consumers what they think. Feedback really does hurt. Start fi nding ways to watch what they do instead.



P.S: When the original Coke was reintroduced, sales rocketed, and it quickly regained its position as the world’s top-selling sugar cola.

Woman Reviews Paperwork in Conference Room

EXPERT-SPEAK: Stop Asking For Feedback. Why It Can Really Hurt

Leadership is a very precise balancing act. American statesman Teddy Roosevelt is said to have once argued, “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” 



This is one aspect of the balancing act I refer to. The other aspect is the very art of navigating the various moving parts leadership entails. Maneuvering these parts requires leaders to demonstrate skill, intuition, discernment, and perseverance. 



There thus needs to be a framework to guide leadership practices. In the South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, Lämsä and Keränen refer to responsible leadership. 



As they argue, “The principles of responsible leadership are organized in a hierarchical order, based on the level of cooperation between manager and employee.” In an analysis of leadership styles, their study found that responsible leadership was dependent on the presence of various principles, including care, trust, openness, fairness, and empowerment. 



This, they argue, is based on ethical frameworks from both parties. As I went through this study, I contemplated the implications of managing employment relations. This could be considered a ubuntu style of leadership that has its roots in various African societies and cultures. 



In Understanding Organizational Leadership Through Ubuntu, Chiku Malunga argues that ubuntu calls for leaders to determine the way for others based on African values such as honesty, sincerity, dignity, and respect for others. 



This goes beyond the traditional hierarchical notions of leadership and focuses on building strong relationships, fostering social cohesion, creating a purpose, and encouraging environments that promote collective wellbeing. In Ubuntu Leadership – An Explication of an Afrocentric Leadership Style, Eugene Laloo argues that there now needs to be a view to encompass traditionally African leadership theories such as ubuntu. 



As he asserts, “Now is the time to refocus on its further development and refi nement to bring this leadership theory into the fold of general leadership discourse.” It could be argued that mutual respect, a central tenet of ubuntu, is the lens through which discipline, confl ict and harmony in the workplace should be analyzed.



Discipline within the context of employment relations can be viewed in two ways. Firstly, it entails a framework of expectations for employees to follow. Strong leaders are made acutely aware of their roles and responsibilities but also the consequences of not meeting these expectations. What is required is a framework for accountability, which outlines how leaders respond to issues such as performance or conduct. Secondly, it denotes one’s own sense of control – or controlled motivation as some camps refer to it as. 



This is based on values such as respect and humility. Leaders who encourage this sense of discipline are likely to have more engaged and empowered employees.Confl ict resolution is a crucial component of leadership, and leaders must be skilled at addressing confl ict not only promptly but also in a constructive manner. 



Conflict resolution relies on open communication. It is thus imperative for employees to create channels for employees to effectively communicate their grievances and for employees to act as mediators where necessary to fi nd mutually beneficial solutions. 



Leaders must have soft skills such as active listening, clear and effective communication, and empathy in their arsenal. This enables a more conducive and positive environment. Disagreements should thus not be viewed negatively but rather through the lens of opportunity for growth.These ideas strive towards achieving harmony in the workplace. 



Harmony is predicated on the very culture of respect. Here, leaders must demonstrate respect through their actions by emphasizing traits such as fairness or empathy. This fosters a sense of belonging. This inspires cooperation and teamwork and instils a sense of belonging and respect for one another. Additionally, the very idea of harmony acknowledges and celebrates differences. The mutual respect that emerges is ubuntu in practice – as the idea insists, ‘I am because you are’. 



In ubuntu-style leadership, these principles are encouraged and deeply ingrained in cultural norms and traditions. According to writer Sammi Caramela, this approach to employee engagement is integral for productivity, creativity, and innovation. 



Strong manager-employee relations have the potential to decrease employee absenteeism and turnover rates, while poor management can have devastating effects. In fact, this is backed up by a GoodHire survey of 3,000 workers, which indicated that 82% of respondents would leave if they had a bad manager. Indeed, leadership is a very precise balancing act – one enriched by the very idea of ubuntu.

Three creative colleagues exchanging ideas

Expert-Speak: Leadership As A Balancing Act Between Ubuntu Principles And Effective Management

A randomized controlled trial published in the leading academic journal Nature finds two days of working from home improved job satisfaction and reduced turnover when compared to those working in offices five days a week.



The long-simmering debate over whether remote work hurts productivity or dampens worker performance has reached the peak of academic prestige: A study in the journal&nbsp;Nature.



Leaders eager to get workers back to the office often&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2023/08/19/the-war-over-work-from-home-the-data-ceos-and-workers-need-to-know/">believe</a>&nbsp;it leads to things like lower worker output and an erosion of workplace culture. But a new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07500-2" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">paper to be published Wednesday</a>&nbsp;in the leading academic journal by Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom and his co-authors suggests new evidence for advantages to hybrid schedules. A randomized controlled trial of employees in a tech firm based in China found that two days of work from home and three days in the office reduced quit rates, improved job satisfaction and had no impact on performance, when compared with employees who worked full-time in the office.



“Everyone’s heard of&nbsp;Nature,” says Bloom. If you’re talking about flexible work arrangements with a CEO who wants people back full time, “having a large, randomized controlled trial—they can still ignore it, but it gets a lot harder.”



The study randomly divided 1,612 workers at Trip.com, a large global travel firm, by whether they had even or odd birthdates. One group was able to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays; the other worked in the office all five days. The researchers found that for those with hybrid schedules, attrition rates dropped by one-third over the six-month experiment period—and were even greater for non-managers, female employees and those with long commutes—while work satisfaction scores improved. The hybrid group also did not have significant differences on performance reviews or promotion rates, even for up to two years after the start of the experiment, and there were not significant differences in the lines of code submitted by the software engineers between the two groups.



That trial method—a real-life experiment on two employee groups randomly split by nothing other than birthdate—allowed the researchers to conclude it was the hybrid work schedule that caused the improvements in retention and job satisfaction, Bloom says, rather than simply being coincidental to other factors. “In many studies you don’t [have that],” Bloom says. “There are no differences between people born on even and odd birthdays.”



The study did not look specifically at workers who are full-time remote, or at arrangements where employees have personal choice over where and when they work, which remains a priority for many workers. That debate will likely continue. But the current study offers additional evidence to support the value of employees getting to work from home at least part of the time as opposed to full-time in the office.



In the paper, Bloom and his co-authors note that some may wonder if a possible explanation for the reduced turnover in the hybrid work group is that members of the full-time office group were frustrated they didn’t get the flexible schedule during the experiment. However, turnover rates for full-time office workers were slightly reduced from the six-month period before the experiment, the researchers write in the paper, suggesting that some may have “guessed (correctly) that the policy would be rolled out to all employees once the experiment ended.”



Another effect: The study found that managers at the company shifted their views of hybrid work over the experiment period. Before it started, managers at the company perceived that hybrid work would reduce productivity by 2.6%; by its close, they believed flexible arrangements could improve productivity by 1%. “There is value in experimentation,” the study authors write.



The paper follows months of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2023/08/19/the-war-over-work-from-home-the-data-ceos-and-workers-need-to-know/">debate</a>&nbsp;over the impact of remote work on company culture, employee productivity and potential downsides to innovation or collaboration. Bloom, who has studied remote work for decades, prompted a stir last year when a&nbsp;<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kqbngD8pemqxAkZmWCOQ32Yk6PXK9eVA/view" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">working paper</a>&nbsp;that reviewed existing studies on the topic pointed to research showing that fully remote workforces appeared to have slightly reduced productivity on average. But the studies also showed that when the work schedule was well-managed and hybrid at least some of the time, the effect was flat or slightly positive, Bloom&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2023/08/19/the-war-over-work-from-home-the-data-ceos-and-workers-need-to-know/">told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;at the time</a>.



Indeed, an early paper by Bloom looked at the same company, Trip.com (one of its co-founders,&nbsp;<a href="https://investors.trip.com/board-member/james-jianzhang-liang" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">James Liang</a>, is a co-author and former PhD student of Bloom’s).&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/does-working-home-work-evidence-chinese-experiment" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">It found</a>&nbsp;that among a group of remote call center agents who worked in person just one day a week, productivity increased 13% and turnover fell by half.



The newer study looked at workers in fields like marketing, software engineering, finance and accounting, helping to address concerns that past studies on lower-paid employees doing repetitive tasks with more objective measurements may not be generalizable to the workforce at large. “These are creatives, they’re in graduate or professional jobs, and they’re innovating, creating, training,” Bloom says of participants in the current study.



Trip.com, Bloom says, was seeking a way to reduce costs in doing the experiment, estimating that each employee who quit cost the company $20,000 in recruiting and training, the paper reports. As a result of the study, the company decided to extend the hybrid policy to all employees.



“There are good and bad things about working from home, but it turns out with hybrid they roughly net each other out,” says Bloom. “Employees were dramatically happier if they get to work from home two days a week, and as a result their quit rates fell by a third. &#8230; The company looked at this and said, ‘what’s not to like?’ ”

A unrecognisable woman works from home. Besides her is a delicious slice of Sticky Toffee Pudding. Naughty but nice!

This New Hybrid Work Study Could Help Reconcile The War Over Work From Home

By Chanel Retief, Nicole Pillay and Oluwatomisin Amokeoja Art Direction: Manelisi Dabata Videography: Thabo Mathebula Photography: Katlego Mokubyane ; Assistant: Sbusiso Sigidi | Studio: NewKatz Studio, Johannesburg  Styling: Deneal Van Wyk Hair &amp; Makeup: SnehhOnline Beauty



Africa’s biggest economies often churn out startups on a regular basis and some of these businesses go on to become key players in the growth of the continent. But what of Africa’s smaller, emerging economies? 



According to a 2023 report by Africa: The Big Deal, 29% of the startups that raised $100,000 or more in 2023 were located outside the big four regions, namely Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Egypt. Donaldson Sackey, a former international footballer-turned-entrepreneur from Togo (a narrow strip of land in Africa’s West coast), who has helmed a fashion business and now has interests in fintech and energy, says that being a serial entrepreneur in one of Africa’s smaller economies has its pros and cons.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="682" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Forbes_Cover3527-682x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-62281" style="width:399px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Forbes_Cover3527-682x1024.jpg 682w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Forbes_Cover3527-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Forbes_Cover3527-768x1153.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Forbes_Cover3527-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Forbes_Cover3527-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Forbes_Cover3527.jpg 1478w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 682px) 100vw, 682px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Donaldson Sackey</figcaption></figure></div>


“On the one hand, there is often a sense of possibility and economic potential, as smaller economies might provide niches that have yet to be completely explored or tapped into. However, in some smaller economies, regulations may be unclear or inconsistently enforced, making it Sackeychallenging to understand what is required to operate legally and comply with regulations. 



Despite the hurdles, becoming a serial entrepreneur in a tiny economy may be quite rewarding.” Therein exists massive opportunities to create significant impact on the local economy. 



“I believe that as a growing entrepreneur, you have a lot of ideas in your daily life, but the most important thing is to actually understand them and put them into action. You must understand that you are in it for the long-term and that it will not become the largest company overnight.



”Sackey says he is now involved in coaching aspiring business owners, and is committed to education, particularly in the field of technology. 



“I think that young people in Africa, and particularly in Togo, are intelligent and creative, but there are often gaps in their educational opportunities, so I provide them with the knowledge I have gained from my courses, many of which are offered online to learn more about various business sectors.”

Sustainable data pie chart

Footballer-Turned-Entrepreneur From Togo On Making It Work In Africa’s Smaller Economies

After years of remote work, post-pandemic employees are struggling with office distractions. The solutions run from in-office phone booths to libraries to, surprisingly, adding more sound.



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Chad West doesn’t go into his London office more than once a week. As a vice president of marketing at crypto smart wallet&nbsp;<a href="https://www.argent.xyz/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Argent</a>, West shows up for strategy or creative meetings. But when he’s just trying to get work done, the distractions and noise at Argent’s open plan office make him 40% less productive than at home, he estimates. Music escaping from coworkers’ headphones and coworkers’ voices pull at his attention while the sound of software engineers banging away at their keyboards grates on his nerves.



“I don’t know if it’s just because we’ve all become a bit more psychopathic, or maybe it’s always been in us, but I pick up on everything now,” says West, 33. “If someone has the audacity to take a phone call in a smallish office where people are trying to work, it grinds my ears.”



More than four years after the pandemic prompted most office workers to log on from home, many have returned to the office, whether because of employer mandates, a desire to spend time with colleagues or a need to escape from roommates or family. About&nbsp;<a href="https://wfhresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/WFHResearch_updates_June2024.pdf" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">27% of paid workdays</a>&nbsp;in the U.S. were done from home in May, down dramatically from some 60% at the pandemic’s peak, but up from less than 10% before Covid-19.



As people have returned to the office either full- or part-time, complaints about a long-standing frustration—the noise and distractions of open-plan designs—have escalated. Workers are taking more Zoom meetings from the office, often speaking louder in those video calls. Bosses encourage office days to be spent “collaborating” and developing social bonds, but that boosts the chatter echoing in the space.



Compounding the problem: At companies that have downsized their real estate to take advantage of fewer people being onsite, conference rooms and private spaces fill up fast–with the first to claim them each day staying put. “It&#8217;s human behavior,” says Melissa Strickland, a principal and managing director at design firm&nbsp;<a href="http://www.hlw.design/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">HLW</a>. If meetings run back-to-back, “why would I [switch rooms] when I could just take all my calls with some convenience [in this room by myself]?”



In a Sept. 2023 survey by workplace research firm&nbsp;<a href="https://www.leesmanindex.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Leesman</a>, noise levels were rated among the 10 most important features of the office—ranking between functioning toilets and an IT help desk. Yet only about 32% of employees are satisfied with noise levels in an average office, another Leesman survey (released this past April) found, and only two issues had lower satisfaction numbers in those offices: Access to nearby “leisure facilities,” and the rate of people walking past workstations.



The response to all these complaints presents a business opportunity, with vendors successfully selling everything from phone booth-style pods to “soundscaping” services that use a “biophilic” approach to help muffle voices with sounds found in nature. Furniture makers and interior designers are adding more acoustic-friendly materials and designing “libraries” for quiet places to work. Some employers are doling out noise-canceling headphones and even building tools to help workers alert colleagues when they need to focus.



“This is the nail that every organization is trying to hit the head of,” says Leesman founder Tim Oldman. He sees designers moving toward “re-cellularization” of interior space—more huddle rooms, private offices or quiet rooms many workers crave. “If we want employees to willingly return to offices, we have to provide space that supports those moments where they need distinct acoustic and visual privacy.”



Office distractions are more than a minor annoyance. A 2021&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-management-and-organization/article/abs/openplan-office-noise-is-stressful-multimodal-stress-detection-in-a-simulated-work-environment/F3EF8D2DF47767F18CBF5C081D6AB3A0#access-block" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">study</a>&nbsp;published in the&nbsp;Journal of Management &amp; Organization&nbsp;found that in experiments with controlled environments, typical noise levels of open plan offices caused increases in physiological stress indicators such as higher heart rates, as well as more facial expressions of disgust and reports by workers of negative moods.



“We don&#8217;t habituate to noise,” observes Libby Sander, an assistant professor at Bond University in Australia who worked on the study. “We have this idea that oh, you’ll just get used to it.…But physiologically and psychologically, your body doesn&#8217;t.”



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The desire for more control of office noise is one reason for the growth of companies like Finland-based&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frameryacoustics.com/en/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Framery</a>, one of the biggest makers of office “pods”—essentially, fully enclosed, modern looking glass-walled phone booths that start at about $8,700 for a compact single. (Some booths seat up to six people, making them more like enclosed conference rooms.) In 2022, Framery’s global revenue hit $164 million, up from $86 million in 2020 and $101 million in 2021. While sales fell slightly in 2023, dinged by market uncertainty, inflation and higher interest rates, cofounder and CEO Samu Hällfors said he expects rapid growth again this year, though he declined to share forecasts.



In March, the company added a new line of pods that not only insulate sound for users seated within the booths, but have a “sound masking” system that emits&nbsp;<a href="https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/pink-noise-sleep" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">pink noise</a>-like sound into surrounding areas. In doing so, the booths raise the ambient noise in nearby spaces, with an aim to make office chatter less intelligible. “The noise level itself? Yes, that’s kind of a problem, but the real problematic thing about noise is when your brain catches a familiar word,” says Hällfors.



Finland-based Framery added a new line of office &#8220;pods&#8221; in March that not only insulate sound for users seated within the booths, but have a “sound masking” system that emits pink noise-like sound into surrounding areas.PHOTO VIA FRAMERY



That’s why designers and entrepreneurs are adding sound&nbsp;into&nbsp;spaces, which can be a way to address concerns about either too much noise or too much silence. After working for others in the sound space for more than a decade, Evan Benway launched London-based&nbsp;<a href="https://www.moodsonic.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Moodsonic</a>&nbsp;in 2022. He now works with companies like SAP, GSK and Steelcase to create “responsive soundscapes” that use sensors to generate background sound that adapts in real time to how distracting or stimulating the environment is.



In effect, Moodsonic helps companies address one of the ironies of the post-pandemic workplace: People are distracted by sound in the office, but it’s often because it’s too quiet, rather than too loud. Instead of having 60 people in an open office where a hum of many conversations happens in the background, “now maybe you have 15 people, and when one person speaks, everyone hears everything that they’re saying,” Benway says. “It’s perfect speech intelligibility”—and the issue that bothers people most.



Moodsonic’s sensors pick up sound levels and adjust the “soundscapes,” which include nature-inspired subtle birdsongs or babbling brooks, depending on the ratio of loud sales calls to focused work or whether it’s a quiet Friday or bustling Tuesday. Benway won’t disclose revenues, but says the company is working with 30 of the 500 largest U.S. companies and is already profitable; in its second year it tripled the square footage where it provides soundscapes and grew subscriptions by 150%.



Others are finding success tapping into not just office workers’ need for privacy, but remote-based workers’ similar desires. Prominent venture capitalist Fred Wilson, the cofounder of New York-based&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usv.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Union Square Ventures</a>, and his wife Joanne, an angel investor, are launching the second location of&nbsp;<a href="https://framework.nyc/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Framework</a>, a coworking space in New York, this fall. The two got the idea after recognizing that in cities like New York, entrepreneurs, creatives and other remote workers have little space of their own and don’t necessarily want to be in “one of these places where there’s all of this shared nonsense,” Joanne says, referring to coworking spaces with group seating and little privacy.



At the Wilsons’ first location in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood, members pay anywhere from $755 to $860 per month, depending on lease term, for their own sound-insulated pod in the airy Framework space, complete with its own mini-fridge, kettle and French-press. Initially designed as a way to socially distance people during the pandemic, the booths now draw members for different reasons. “It’s quiet, and they don’t have to listen to their neighbor talking to their friend or wife or whatever,” Fred Wilson told&nbsp;Forbes. The original location has a waiting list of about two dozen people.



Furniture and interior designers, too, are building more acoustic-driven protection into their spaces.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.zintraacoustic.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Zintra Acoustics</a>, a line of wall panels, space dividers and ceiling fixtures that help absorb sound, has seen “surging” demand for acoustic solutions, said Kirsten Grosman, product marketing lead for the brand, which is owned by Australia-based Baresque Group, in an emailed statement. “Noise has become the top grievance among employees,” she said.



Meanwhile, the Swedish company IKEA, which has been in the office furniture business for 40 years, is rolling out a new line (known as MITTZON) that’s designed in part to address sound and noise annoyances. For example, it has added a wood fiber material, normally used in the construction industry for insulation, to acoustic screens that are wrapped in fabric. IKEA also worked with suppliers to quiet the mechanism that controls an electric standing desk’s height with a button press. “The role of the office has changed,” says Ikea product design developer Philip Dilé. “A majority of people told us they wanted to come back [to the office] to find focus and less distraction.”



Ikea’s new line, with its acoustic screens, is one example of a broader move to offer more solutions that don’t require lots of private offices or rooms, which arguably defeat the purpose of having people come into the office to collaborate. “Why would I want to come into a whole bank of pods or Zoom booths, and that’s my experience for the day?” asks Tracy Wymer, vice president of insights &amp; inspiration at Teknion, which makes booths itself. Wymer notes that his firm is working on a new product that provides “visual cues to whether you’re available or whether you’re in focused work,” but said it’s too early to offer details.



Software firm monday.com is piloting a device made by an in-house &#8220;Makers&#8221; team that’s positioned on the corner of workers’ computer monitors; users can set it to show coworkers how much time they need to focus.MONDAY.COM



One employer experimenting with visual cues is monday.com, an Israel-based project management software firm. It has a group of “Makers” on staff who’ve designed an Internet of Things (IoT) device called “FocusTime” that’s positioned on the corner of workers’ computer monitors. It looks like a dial that shows how much remaining uninterrupted time the user needs—and acts as a physical enhancement of the Slack or Teams status icons people are accustomed to seeing onscreen.



The idea originally came from a monday.com employee who struggled with colleagues’ interruptions as she returned to the office; an early version was simply a flag that could manually lift when someone shouldn’t be disturbed before becoming a device users could just tap on and off. It evolved into the current gadget, which users can set to show coworkers how much time they need to focus—the time window is copied to calendar apps—or if time for quiet work is blocked on a digital calendar, it will appear on the device.



Saron Paz, leader of the Makers team, says about 20 employees are taking part in a pilot using the prototype gadget; a company-wide test is in the planning stages and then, potentially, it could become a product it commercializes. (In September, monday.com plans to display the device at a customer conference in London and New York.) At the very least, Paz hopes the devices “start a conversation between people about what they need in terms of noise or other pain points,” he says, noting “we are still hard-wired for things that are physical.”



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Other companies are handing out noise-canceling headphones as back-to-office perks or adding more quiet spaces into designs. When Intuit’s Mailchimp division designed its new offices—a sleek, modern space along Atlanta’s popular walking and biking BeltLine path—acoustics were a priority. The old space had a sea of desks in a converted warehouse with only six phone booths or “drop-in” rooms; the new one has more than 60, says project executive Colin Hughes. Staffers are given the option of ordering noise-canceling headphones free of charge.



In this “innovation hub”—as Intuit calls the new Atlanta office–acoustic-friendly panels were used on walls, ceilings and as dividers to separate office “neighborhoods.” There are five “library” spaces throughout the building, several of which are wood-paneled, lined with books and housing roomy tables with task lighting that evoke the feel of a modern university library. People tend to work there silently, says Hughes: “If you see there’s books on the walls and it looks like a library, you’re going to behave that way.”



One driving factor behind creating more spaces for quiet work has been greater awareness about the needs of neurodiverse workers, such as those with ADHD or sensory processing challenges.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7732033/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">External research</a>&nbsp;shows that 15% to 20% of employees are neurodivergent, says Salesforce executive vice president for real estate and workplace services Relina Bulchandani. That prompted the software giant to design floors in its new Chicago tower with “meditation rooms” for quiet breaks and “library” spaces equipped with double monitor screens requested by software engineers.



While labeled as libraries, there are no signs to keep quiet, says Bulchandani. She notes that as people have spent more time in the office, they’ve grown more comfortable with taking calls at desks in open office areas, and Salesforce has urged people to do more of that—within reason—to keep small huddle rooms from booking up. “We&#8217;re encouraging folks that you can take calls at your desk, but just be mindful—you don’t want to be all day on video calls at your desk.”



Still, the paradox of many such solutions for office distractions isn’t lost on Argent’s West. If everyone simply had the choice of where they want to work—rather than having to report to an office—some of those solutions wouldn’t be needed. “All a company should really care about is efficiency,” he says. “If you’re delivering what’s expected of you, knock yourself out.”

Shot of a young man experiencing a headache at work while being overwhelmed

A Noisy Office Is A Nuisance–And A Business Opportunity

Ayana Parsons, cofounder of The Fearless Fund, took the stage at the ForbesBLK Summit. The Fund is in court defending its right to support Black women founders.



When Ayana Parsons, cofounder of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thefearless.foundation/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">The Fearless Fund</a>, took the stage today at the ForbesBLK Summit in Atlanta, it was an emotional moment. She was there alongside political leader Stacey Abrams and Dr. Sesha Joi Moon, chief diversity officer for the 117th and 118th Congresses. “Anytime you are surrounded by Black women, they are going to pour into you,’’ Parsons said. “So, when I walked on this stage, these eyes were watering because they understood the heavy burden that is on all of us in this country.’’



Part of the heavy burden on Parsons these days is a&nbsp;<a href="https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202313138.pdf" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">preliminary injunction</a>&nbsp;issued earlier this month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit blocking the Fearless Fund from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dariashunina/2024/06/04/court-blocks-fearless-funds-exclusive-grants-for-black-women/">awarding grants exclusively to Black women entrepreneurs</a>–it’s very purpose. The court determined that this practice likely violates Title 42 of the U.S. Code, which prohibits private parties from discriminating on the basis of race when making or enforcing contracts.



(Update: On June 26th, Parsons announced she has stepped down as general manager of the Fearless Fund,<a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/business/co-founder-of-fearless-fund-steps-down-amid-battle-with-conservative-group/CAD5WYN3BFCRTBIYWRY6ZEUTYM/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;but told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution&nbsp;</a>that the move was unrelated to the lawsuit.)



While<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilymason/2024/03/20/revenge-of-the-bootstrapped-startup/">&nbsp;less than 1% of start-ups with employees</a>&nbsp;receive venture capital investment to get rolling, VC dollars play a crucial role in the highest growth start-ups. Moreover, businesses who receive VC money enjoy related benefits, including alternative funding sources, valuable mentorship and industry connections, and increased representation in the business world. That can be particularly important for Black entrepreneurs who might not otherwise have access to those contacts.



At the ForbesBLK Summit, &#8220;access&#8221; and “bias” were consistently highlighted when discussing venture capital. It’s no mystery why: Startups run by Black women received just&nbsp;<a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/the-ebb-and-flow-of-vc-funding-how-to-support-black-women-in-business/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">0.34%</a>&nbsp;of U.S. venture capital dollars in 2022.



The Fearless Fund’s Parsons put it this way: “As Black people there are three things we need—love, money, and power. And as Black people we have a whole lot of love, but what we don&#8217;t have is a lot of money and we don&#8217;t have the power.”



Yelitsa Jean-Charles, founder and CEO of&nbsp;<a href="https://healthyrootsdolls.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Healthy Roots Dolls</a>, a toy company that empowers young girls and celebrates the beauty of diversity through its dolls and storybooks, has been a rare recipient of VC investment. “I was one of the first Black women to raise $1 million in venture capital, and that is a problem. There is always a start-up program and 5-week boot camp, but no one is cutting the check,” she said.



The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/the-ebb-and-flow-of-vc-funding-how-to-support-black-women-in-business/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>&nbsp;suggests that the death of George Floyd drew attention to Black startups–at least for a brief time. In 2020, VC funding of Black businesses surged to between $850 million and $1.2 billion. But by 2022, as overall VC funding fell, the money going to Black start-ups declined even more sharply–by 45%.



One panel at the ForbesBLK Summit explored ways to turn that around. Its title:&nbsp;Show Me the Money: Get the Attention of Investors to Raise Capital.&nbsp;Panelist Michael Pronam, a partner and managing director for Scrum Sports &amp; Entertainment, suggested that networking is the key to increasing the number of minority businesses that receive venture capital. “There is a direct correlation between underfunded and under-networked. One thing that you can actually own is your network. Even if that particular start-up doesn&#8217;t get funded they should leave the pitch meeting with connections.”



Stacey Abrams has been pioneering other ways to increase funding; she’s co-founder of the Now Account Network which provides working capital to small businesses by converting their trade receivables almost immediately into cash.



In closing, Abrams, a lawyer and author, gave the audience her take on how Black Americans can thrive economically. “We have to stand firm and hold our businesses accountable. We have to speak up. We have to tell our stories. We have to stay connected. There are organizations doing the work and investing in our future because we are winning and we cannot win if we give up.”

Business and Leadership Success

Black Founders Still Struggle For Their Share Of Venture Capital Funding

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Chip designer and artificial intelligence juggernaut Nvidia narrowly topped Microsoft’s market capitalization Tuesday to become the world’s most valuable public company, less than two weeks after it <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/06/05/nvidia-tops-apples-market-cap-becoming-the-worlds-2nd-most-valuable-company/">surpassed Apple’s market cap</a> following months of strong stock gains.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Nvidia shares traded up more than 3% Tuesday afternoon at around $135.65, while Microsoft traded down a fraction of a percent at $447.58.



The stock performances sent Nvidia’s market cap up to $3.33 trillion and Microsoft’s to $3.32 trillion.



Nvidia’s stock is up about 12% since its recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/06/10/nvidia-shares-now-trading-at-just-120-after-stock-split-in-wake-of-monstrous-run/">stock split</a>, which brought its price down from $1,210 per share to about $120 per share.



Nvidia began the year with a $1.2 trillion market value, less than half of Microsoft and Apple’s market cap at the time.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h2>



177%. That’s how much Nvidia’s market cap has spiked since the start of the year, when shares traded at $48.17 (adjusted for stock split).



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FORBES VALUATION</h2>



We estimate Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s net worth at <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jensen-huang/">$118.8 billion</a>, making him the 11th-richest person in the world—the highest ranking he’s secured on Forbes’ <a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#13e2edb03d78">real-time billionaires list</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Nvidia’s milestone comes amid an artificial intelligence craze that has made its chips and graphics processing units increasingly valuable to fellow tech companies like Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet. Microsoft is estimated to make up 15% of Nvidia’s revenue, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-stock-mystery-customer-microsoft-ubs-revenue-h100-gpu-chips-2024-5#:~:text=According%20to%20supply%20chain%20data,at%20about%206%25%20of%20revenue." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>&nbsp;supply chain data, and Nvidia is estimated to control between 70% and 95% of the AI chip market,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/02/nvidia-dominates-the-ai-chip-market-but-theres-rising-competition-.html#:~:text=Nvidia%20dominates%20the%20AI%20chip%20market%2C%20but%20there's%20more%20competition%20than%20ever,-Published%20Sun%2C%20Jun&amp;text=Nvidia's%20AI%20accelerators%20have%20between,other%20chipmakers%20ramp%20up%20development." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">CNBC&nbsp;</a>reported, citing Mizuho Securities. Nvidia, which reported $8.4 billion in net income in its 2023 fiscal year, shows little to no signs of slowing down, as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/06/15/can-apple-stock-go-much-higher-analysts-dont-think-so-heres-why/">analysts forecast</a>&nbsp;its net income to surpass Apple’s in just four years.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/06/10/nvidia-shares-now-trading-at-just-120-after-stock-split-in-wake-of-monstrous-run/">Nvidia Shares Now Trading At Just $120 After Stock Split In Wake Of Monstrous Run</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/06/05/nvidia-tops-apples-market-cap-becoming-the-worlds-2nd-most-valuable-company/">Nvidia Tops Apple’s Market Cap, Becoming The World’s 2nd Most Valuable Company</a> (Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/06/15/can-apple-stock-go-much-higher-analysts-dont-think-so-heres-why/">Can Apple Stock Go Much Higher? Analysts Don&#8217;t Think So: Here&#8217;s Why</a> (Forbes)

Nvidia’s Stock Price Hits Record High, As Analysts Increase Their Outlook On The Company

Nvidia Now World’s Most Valuable Company—Topping Microsoft And Apple

In an era where the boundaries between work and personal life are increasingly blurred, a new trend is emerging, shifting the way we approach our daily grind and overall productivity.



The trend, known as ‘chronoworking’, marries the concepts of time (‘chrono’) and labor (‘working’) to propose an alternative approach to balancing our professional and personal lives.



Chronoworking is based on the idea that everyone operates on their unique body clock or circadian rhythm – a natural internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and then repeats roughly every 24 hours.



Supporters of the trend recommend that individuals align their workdays with their peak periods of energy and creativity.



For those who find their energy surging with the sunrise, this strategy means harnessing the quiet of the early morning to dive into tasks that require deep concentration and creativity.



Starting the workday as early as five or six in the morning, these early risers can power through their to-do lists uninterrupted by the typical distractions that come later in the day.



By midday or early afternoon, they’ve accomplished a full day’s work, leaving ample time for personal pursuits, family or leisure activities during the late afternoon and evening.



On the other hand, individuals who hit their stride later in the day, often referred to as night owls, benefit from a delayed start.



This flexibility allows them to begin their professional obligations in the late morning or afternoon when their mental acuity and energy levels start to climb.



Working into the evening, they can capitalize on the quiet hours when distractions are sometimes reduced, channeling their peak productivity into their job.



But the flexibility of chronoworking extends beyond mere start and end times.



It includes the potential for split shifts, where an employee works part of their day in the morning, takes a substantial break during their less productive hours, and resumes work in the evening during a second burst of productivity.



For instance, someone might work from 7AM to 11AM, take a break for personal time or rest, then resume work from 4PM to 8PM.



On top of that, chronoworking enables task alignment with an individual’s productivity peaks.



High-concentration tasks such as problem-solving, planning, and creative endeavors can be scheduled for when an employee feels most alert and inspired.



In contrast, less- demanding tasks like emails, administrative duties, or meetings can be placed during the natural energy dips, ensuring that the quality of work remains consistently high across all tasks.



Remote and hybrid work models, which have seen a significant uptick due to the global pandemic, are particularly well-suited to the principles of chronoworking.



The elimination of commute times and the inherent flexibility of working from home allow employees to easily adjust their schedules to fit their internal clocks.



While the concept of synchronizing work schedules with one’s internal clock is not a novel idea, the shift towards more remote and hybrid working models has spotlighted its potential benefits.



The traditional nine-to-five workday, once the standard, is increasingly viewed as an outdated model that fails to consider the varied rhythms and lifestyles of today’s diverse workforce.



By allowing for work schedules that honor individual circadian rhythms, employers might be able to foster a more motivated, satisfied,and productive workforce.



It’s important to understand, however, that chronoworking is not a one-size-fits-all solution and



may not be feasible for all industries or roles.



Positions that necessitate fixed hours or a physical presence, such as those in healthcare, retail, or manufacturing, might find it challenging to fully implement chronoworking.



The enthusiasm for chronoworking is grounded in the belief that the future of work is not about clocking more hours but about working more intelligently.



By aligning work with our body clocks, we can achieve greater efficiency and outcomes, both for individuals and organizations.



As the workforce continues to evolve, some believe that the principles of chronoworking offer a promising path toward a more adaptive, fulfilling, and productive future.



Could this be the moment to challenge and move beyond the traditional nine-to-five, and clock-in to a work schedule that’s in harmony with our natural tendencies?



The evolution of work may well depend on our willingness to sync our working lives with our personal biological clocks, and, in doing so, establish a new era of work that is as fulfilling as it is efficient.

Young man on a video call in a cafe

Chronoworking: Why Our Workday Needs To Punch In To Our Body Clocks

Handshake is creating a social media-style feed for its popular jobs platform for college students, adding video tools for employers to match less buzzy companies with young job seekers—and connect with a generation that lives by the medium.



On TikTok, there are more than 2.6 million posts with the hashtag #WorkLife—videos providing&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8vyL8w2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“PTO hack” advice</a>&nbsp;for taking time off, outtakes discussing career buzzwords like “<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8vyYPeq/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bare Minimum Mondays</a>” and short clips describing a “day in the life” at companies like Google or Deloitte. Most recently, young workers have even been filming themselves getting laid off, posting wildly viral videos of the once-private moments and creating&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-05/executives-fear-tiktok-backlash-in-era-of-sweeping-job-cuts?srnd=work-shift" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">new headaches for employers</a>. For Gen Z, online video is as much a part of their work lives as it is their personal experiences.



And yet, the job search platform perhaps most associated with college students—Handshake,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinstoller/2022/12/01/how-to-get-a-first-job-if-you-arent-linkedin/?sh=60bc63044b1f">which counts some 15 million of them as users of its platform</a>—has been designed more like a job board without video than a social media tool filled with it. Until now. On Tuesday, the popular platform is&nbsp;<a href="https://joinhandshake.com/blog/our-team/our-next-chapter/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">launching</a>&nbsp;a “feed”-like interface and new video features it hopes will give companies a more direct line to communicating with Gen Z candidates in the style they prefer—and job seekers a more centralized place for discovering opportunities they might not otherwise find.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinstoller/2022/12/01/how-to-get-a-first-job-if-you-arent-linkedin/?sh=60bc63044b1f">Garrett Lord</a>, Handshake’s cofounder and CEO, hopes it will “level the information playing field,” he told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in an interview. “It feels a bit disconnected on Reddit or TikTok,” he says of employers’ videos about their companies. Handshake aims to be “the place where all the jobs, career fairs and conversations come together.”



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmylucas/2023/04/07/bosses-are-training-employees-to-be-influencers-after-long-discouraging-social-media-posts-about-work/?sh=1b742a9c6d8e">Employers have already hopped on the social media trend</a>, creating their own “day in the life” videos and promotional clips that cater to young job seekers. But in a digital world of content overload and an endless choice of platforms like Glassdoor and TikTok to find employee reviews and interview insights, it can be hard for candidates to find those videos unless they’re actively seeking out a specific employer’s career site or TikTok handle.



Rolling out the new design amid a tumultuous job market and continued layoffs—particularly in the tech and media sectors—is a feature, not a bug, Lord says. While full-time job posts on Handshake, like many job boards, were down 24% in 2023 thanks in part to the tech sector’s slowdown, and revenues were just above $120 million—up 10% from 2022—Lord says he’s continuing to see “an incredible amount of demand” for college students. The new features could also help less buzzy employers find tech workers concerned about job security in that industry.



“Some companies are doubling down in this environment because Big Tech isn’t hiring as much,” Lord says. “That could mean there are more great software engineers for automotive or finance companies to hire.”



Handshake’s new features include a redesigned app—which only advertised job postings and recruiting events before—that now acts as a scrollable feed similar to other social media platforms. It allows students to swipe through job postings, events such as career fairs, alumni reviews and advice, as well as short-form videos created by employers, another new tool. “This is very much in the zeitgeist of what students want and expect,” Lord says.



The idea is to provide job seekers with a more engaging view of the companies they’re applying to and interviewing for—one that goes beyond bullet points on a job board or a slickly produced video of managers boasting about strong company culture. For Gen Z, video is king, says Adam Robinson, founder and CEO at recruiting software company Hireology. “More often than not, the first page a job seeker views after looking at the list of jobs are the case studies and videos,” he says.



Yet that also means it’s a high-stakes move for employers, one that can backfire if the videos come across as too promotional or lacking in credibility. Young job seekers, says Robinson, “can see through a scripted, choreographed and overly produced video” with surprising ease.



Arizona State University junior Mehul Kumar Srivastava says videos have been key when looking for internships. “Job descriptions don’t really tell you what’s actually happening at a company,” the computer science major says, adding that the “day in the life of an intern” videos show him what to expect. “That’s really motivating, because you want to be there.”



Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer at Handshake, says the “feed” and social media-style scroll features are designed to add a level of serendipity to college students’ job search process, giving those who may not know what type of career they want or what employer they want to work for a way to discover new roles and companies. “The old setup put a lot more onus on the student to know what they wanted to find and to have a clear idea of what they want to look for in a specific job,” she says.



Handshake’s new interface uses students’ profiles—their major, selected location, companies of interest and the college they attend—to curate the jobs and posts they see in their feeds, showing students employers they may not have considered before or connecting them with alumni for advice. For employers, the new interface is designed to connect employers with a wider range of candidates.



Companies including TikTok, Teach for America and L’Oréal have been testing out Handshake’s short-form video option, which is being released Tuesday as an early access program that all of its 900,000 employers on the platform can now request to join at no added cost.



At L’Oréal, group vice president of talent acquisition Emma Shuttleworth says the move is part of a larger effort at the company to attract young workers. She says the marketing team enlists a Gen Z taskforce to help inform young applicants and make videos they’ll actually watch. On Handshake, the beauty company shares videos about their hiring process and longer-form “masterclass” videos about specific skills such as how to run a new marketing campaign. Shuttleworth hopes “it allows us to be at the forefront of students’ minds,” she says, “and in front of students who maybe have never considered applying to L’Oréal before.”

This Gen Z Jobs Site Wants To Give Employers A TikTok Alternative

More states are now giving money to families who pull their kids out of public school, creating a pot that can be spent on online learning and microschool programs.



In September, Sandra Testo pulled her 14-year-old son, Keaton, out of his public middle school in Trinity, Florida—a response, she says, to years of bullying that had left him so anxious he ended up routinely hiding out in the school nurse’s office. Keaton now spends his days at home, completing his 8th grade coursework via Outschool, an online learning platform that offers live virtual classes for K-12 students. On Tuesdays, he attends a Christian co-op with other kids his age to study art and play basketball. “It’s been the best thing,” Sandra Testo says. “His demeanor has changed. He’s just so calm now.” Testo pays about $300 per month for Outschool from an educational savings account (ESA) funded by Florida.



Homeschooling is booming for a variety of reasons, but chief among them are dissatisfaction with public schools that spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic and $5 billion a year (and growing) of state stipends for families opting for public school alternatives. Those can include traditional private schools, online classes, homeschooling and microschools—networks of in-person learning “pods” with one teacher and a dozen to two dozen kids, often using online courses.



It all adds up to a growing parent-driven market for the edtech industry, says Michael Moe, founder and CEO of GSV Ventures, which backs educational startups. “Personally, I think the most exciting opportunity is in microschools, but homeschool, charter schools, low-cost private schools and virtual charter schools are all positioned well for this coming boom,” he says.



In 2019, before the pandemic, 3.7% of children aged 5 to 17 were schooled primarily at home either by parents or through virtual classes, up from 2% in 1999, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2023/2023101.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey</a>&nbsp;by the National Center for Education Statistics, which attributes that increase in part to information technology making home instruction more feasible. The NCES doesn’t have more recent data yet, but an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/homeschooling-growth-data-by-district/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analysis</a>&nbsp;by the&nbsp;Washington Post&nbsp;found the number of homeschooled children has surged 51% since the 2017-18 school year. Meanwhile, private school enrollment rose just 7% while public school enrollment declined 4%. The big spurt in homeschooling came during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years, when virtual classes and mask mandates were widespread. Since then, as public schools have returned to (more or less) normal, homeschooling numbers have dropped some, but held on to much of their pandemic era gains. Notably, some of the students who fled public school for home during the pandemic are now enrolling in microschools.



A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/26/home-schooling-vs-public-school-poll/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">poll&nbsp;</a>conducted in August for the&nbsp;Post&nbsp;found homeschooling has spread well beyond the Christian conservatives most associated with the movement in recent decades. These days, homeschooling families increasingly cite anxiety over school safety (including bullying and violence) as well as a belief that what is available online is better than the instruction in local public schools, with a majority now&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/tablet/2023/09/25/aug-1-10-2023-washington-post-schar-school-home-schooling-poll/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">using online live or recorded classes</a>.



This parent-driven opportunity is a rare bright spot for an edtech industry still struggling through the bust that followed its Covid boom. Funding for U.S. edtech startups in 2023 totaled $3.2 billion, down dramatically from the $9.5 billion raised in 2022 and $20.3 billion in 2021, according to data from Crunchbase. (In 2019, before the pandemic, the industry received $2.2 billion in investment.) The Covid-era funding frenzy came as three federal stimulus packages showered&nbsp;<a href="https://covid-relief-data.ed.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$190 billion</a>&nbsp;on K-12 schools—money was spent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/k-12-federal-covid-relief-what-can-we-learn-from-doing-school-funding-differently/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">on everything</a>&nbsp;from beefing up technology for online learning, to making schools physically safer, to mental health supports and catch-up instruction for students. (Schools must spend their final Covid dollars by this coming September.)



As the federal windfall ends, new money to support the parent-driven boomlet is coming from state-funded educational savings accounts. Back in 2020, there were just four state ESA programs serving about 25,000 children and doling out around $100 million annually, says Joe Connor, founder and CEO of Odyssey, a platform that aims to connect state ESA programs with parents and education vendors. Today, 13 states have programs (some have more than one program, with different eligibility and funding) providing $5 billion a year to parents, he says. Those numbers are likely to grow. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/the-top-10-education-trends-for-2023" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">33 state legislatures considered ESA programs last year</a>&nbsp;and that it is now tracking nearly 100 such proposals.



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In August 2022, Melissa Shah, a Gilbert, Arizona mother of three, used a state funded ESA to enroll her now 16-year-old son into a KaiPod microschool. He’s neurodiverse and excels at math, but struggles with writing and reading comprehension. “Being able to customize your child’s education allows both the child and the family to increase their quality of life,” Shah says. “My son is finally feeling challenged in math, but it took until 11th grade. He spent so many years being bored in this subject, but not until we moved to an accelerated online private school paired with KaiPod Learning did he really shine.” Her son is now making plans to attend college—something Shah doesn’t think he would have considered without the opportunity he’s now had to forge his own educational path.



While ESAs are clearly boosting the money available to parents, Amar Kumar, founder of Boston-based KaiPod, argues they’re actually a “lagging indication” of growing parental demands for more control over their children’s education. “The way I see it is—ESAs follow what’s happening on the ground. As more and more families are saying, ‘Hey, I want to tailor my child’s education the way I see fit,’ that’s when politicians come on board and say, ‘Okay, then you should be able to use your tax dollars to do that.’”



Since launching in 2021 with seed funding from Y Combinator and EO Ventures, among others, KaiPod has helped independent teachers set up 49 pods and has opened 19 of its own company-run pods across five states. About half its current students were homeschooled before enrolling, while another quarter left full-time online schooling to join KaiPod and the last quarter left traditional public or private schools, Kumar says. Each pod is typically made up of 12 to 14 students and one educator. The pod covers a range of school subjects—from math to reading to science—with each student following their own self-paced and family-selected curriculum. Tuition prices vary by pod. In Nashua, New Hampshire, a five-day, Monday through Friday plan costs $6,600 per academic year. In Rosewell, Georgia, the same plan costs parents $9,000 per year. Parents also have the option to purchase two, three or four-day plans at most locations.



If parents have not already settled on a homeschooling curriculum, KaiPod helps them construct one. “So they may choose an a la carte approach of curriculum—Khan Academy for Math or Lexia for reading or something else for science,’’ Kumar says. “And then they come to the Kai pod three, four or five days a week to do all the other things and have a safe place to work.”



Outschool, a San Francisco-based online learning service, has seen a surge in business from ESAs, with the number of users paying with the accounts growing six fold in 2023, reports founder and CEO Amir Nathoo. Over the course of 2023, Outschools’ weekly receipts from ESA funds increased from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands, he says. Currently, about half of the 100,000 monthly users of the platform are homeschooled, while others use it to supplement their public or private education. (The service, which was launched from the 2016 Y Combinator class, raised $110 million at a $3 billion valuation in 2021, bringing its total funding to $242 million from more than two dozen investors.)



Tony Wan, head of platform at Reach Capital, an education-focused VC firm that has invested in Outschool, cites state funded ESAs as one of the most important K-12 education trends to watch this year. “We anticipate demand for ESAs to grow as parents continue to seek alternatives for their children who they feel are not well served by existing and local options,” offers Wan, whose firm has also invested in other companies that sell to parents, such as early learning and reading platform Sharpen and tutoring platform Preply.



“We’ve seen (the number of) prospective customers that ask about paying with ESAs and other government funding increase dramatically,” reports Felipe Izquierdo, Founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Quest, which uses online games to teach math to pre-teens. He sees this as a big area of growth for his year-old startup, which now has 500 customers. So too does Garrett Smiley, the cofounder and CEO of Sora Schools, a New York-based virtual accredited private middle and high school that expects to increase its enrollment to 1,000 next academic year, from 335 now.



While ESA proposals have engendered big political fights in some states and so far have only been adopted by Republican controlled states, they seem to enjoy broader public support than the older private school voucher model. In a July&nbsp;<a href="https://hunt-institute.org/resources/2023/12/2023-across-the-aisle-report-cutting-through-the-noise-parents-and-voters-want-real-world-skills-safe-schools-and-literacy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey for the Hunt Institute of 1,300 likely 2024 voters</a>, 56% of respondents said they support spending taxpayer dollars on education savings accounts, compared to 49% who said the same for vouchers. (The Hunt Institute, which is affiliated with Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, has received funding from the foundations of Amazon founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?sh=33966241b238">Jeff Bezos&nbsp;</a>and Microsoft cofounder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/">Bill Gates</a>&nbsp;and his ex-wife&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/melinda-french-gates/">Melinda French Gates</a>&nbsp;and from Meta cofounder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?sh=65dcd7a3e06d">Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;and his wife Priscilla Chan.)



Which students qualify for ESAs, how much they get and what parents can spend the money on varies widely from program to program. Montana and North Carolina have launched accounts just for students with special needs. New Hampshire established its ESA in 2021 for families with 350% or less of the poverty rate (a household income of $105,000 or less for a family of four). The accounts are not popular with teachers’ unions. The American Federation of Teachers-New Hampshire sued to block the program, claiming it violates the state constitution because it is partially funded through the state’s lottery program, whose earnings are earmarked exclusively for state aid to education. In November, a Superior Court judge&nbsp;<a href="https://www.doj.nh.gov/news/2023/documents/20231115-howes-v-edelblut-mtd.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dismissed the lawsuit</a>.



West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship program, launched in 2022, and recently upheld by the state’s Supreme Court, provides accounts (equal to the state’s per capita contribution to local public schools) only to students who had previously been enrolled in public schools or are just starting kindergarten. This year, the accounts provide $4,489 to eligible students to pay for tuition, homeschooling curriculum and other expenses for individualized education. But the legislation could eventually make the accounts more widely available.



That’s in line with a trend toward wider eligibility. Arkansas, for example, launched ESAs this year with eligibility restricted to certain students, such as those with disabilities or fleeing the lowest ranked public schools, with total participation capped. The accounts are equal to 90% of the state’s per capita student funding for the prior year for public schools—that translates to $6,600 this year. But by the 2025-2026 school year, the state plans to make the accounts available to all students who want to leave public school.



“Generally, states want to make sure that the programs are up and running and that there is no fraud, waste and abuse before they expand the categories,” Connor observes. “But I think if you step back, generally the policy is to empower parents. And historically what we’ve seen is an expansion of what that means rather than a contraction.”



Arizona’s “empowerment scholarship accounts” were first established in 2011 for students with disabilities. For the 2022-23 academic year, children with disabilities were eligible for up to $43,000 in ESA funding, depending on their disability. But in 2022 the state made smaller accounts (now ranging from $6,000 to $9,000, depending on how much state aid would have been paid to a public or charter school system if the student had been enrolled) available to any non-disabled resident K-12 student regardless of family income, so long as they’re not enrolled in public schools or publicly funded charter schools. Parents can spend the money on private school tuition, curriculum, home education or tutoring, to name a few things. (This is separate from Arizona’s tax-credit subsidized voucher program for private schools and families can’t qualify for both.)



Connor’s Odyssey works with ESA programs in Idaho, Missouri and Iowa, and operates an online marketplace where parents can purchase pre-approved educational services for their children. After the programs are up and running, he sees a spike in interest from education vendors who want in on the action. “Once money actually starts flowing to the parents, and parents are purchasing things, we typically see that is when vendors—some tutoring centers, afterschool programs, music programs—get very interested in it, because now it’s a potential source of business and revenue for them,” he says.

Serious Mother Helps her Children To Do Their Homework in a Living Room

Will Homeschooling Parents Save Edtech?

In 1943, the Royal Air Force looked for quick fixes to improve the probability that their bombers could complete their missions and successfully return home. One option was to add armor-plating, but what was the optimal placement which would ensure maximum protection without compromising the aircraft’s performance?



The accepted thinking, based on the data collected from returning bombers, was that the wings, nose, and fuselage should be armored up. They, after all, had the most bullet holes.



It took a gifted mathematician, Abraham Wald, to highlight that the best solution would, in reality, be to armor the three areas that never seemed to get hit: the cockpit, the engines, and the tail.



He had correctly hypothesized that the bullet patterns would be evenly distributed and, therefore, the planes that did not return had been taken down due to weaknesses in these three key areas.



This is a wonderful story as it highlights how, if you want to be effective using data for strategic decision-making, you have to think deeply about both the data you have and the data you don’t.



Companies, surprisingly, despite their significant investment in technology, still seem to succumb to their own version of this data selection bias.



For while they do not have to worry about the negative consequences of suboptimal armoring, they do need to optimize the placement of resources, to ensure they provide maximum customer value without compromising their ability to scale profitably.



The data they consistently seem to ignore when making these types of resource decisions is that which exposes the real value they bring to their clients.



I’ll use the case of mid-size Asian bank, DBS Bank, as an example. For years they had managed their business using key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs helped them to focus on efficiently distributing their products to millions of retail customers.



Call centers, for example, would typically focus on reducing call abandonment, queuing times, handling times, and improving first call resolutions.



And I suspect that over time DBS were able to improve productivity and offer a more streamlined service to their clients.



But although these metrics no doubt helped the company reduce its costs, it reportedly added extra ones for their customers.



And the cost that seemingly annoyed their customers the most was the extra hours they had to waste, dealing with the bank.



So it was Paul Cobban and his team who realized they were managing using the data they had, not the data they needed. So they pivoted and reset the strategy to focus on improving just one metric: reducing the time customers spend dealing with them. Now, their teams had to think more deeply about how to ensure their customers didn’t have to call centers, write emails, travel to branches, or wait in long queues.



Cobban estimated that this process was able to “take out at least 250 million wasted customer hours per year”, as per a 2016 article in Forbes.



This helped DBS transform from being recognized as one of the worst banks in Singapore to becoming one of the best and most loved.



It must have taken courage for the team to stop worrying about internal metrics and start trying to develop customer-led ones.



Especially when business schools and consultants are still extolling the virtues of balanced scorecards based on the assumption you can’t manage what you can’t measure.



The truth is, these management systems tend to reinforce selection bias. This occurs as executives often shape strategies around what is straightforward to manage and quantify, rather than exploring the often ethereal data sets that help identify where the real client value lies.



Aligning compensation with easily quantifiable metrics such as revenue, profit margins, or operational efficiency is much simpler than assessing the value a client derives because you saved him time, or amplified his brand, or increased his profits, or made him happier, or reduced his stress levels.



Still, working out the bullet patterns on planes that are hundreds of meters below the sea wasn’t easy either.



Predicting how best to serve your customers, without understanding the actual value you bring them may have worked in a world where change is slow and the future is predictable.



That world, I’m afraid, has gone.

Business people working in a board room with a laptop and digital tablet

Why KPIs Can Kill Companies

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Johnson &amp; Johnson will pay an estimated $700 million to resolve an investigation by more than 40 states into the pharmaceutical firm’s marketing of its talcum powder, according to Bloomberg, following thousands of lawsuits alleging it failed to warn customers about cancer risks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



The tentative agreement will end an ongoing probe into Johnson &amp; Johnson’s talcum-based baby powder and whether the company wrongfully marketed the product,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-08/j-j-to-pay-700-million-to-settle-states-talc-marketing-probe?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=business&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_source=twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the deal.



Johnson &amp; Johnson and representatives for state attorneys general involved in the investigation have agreed on the settlement amount but not other terms for the agreement, Bloomberg reported.



The agreement is expected to protect Johnson &amp; Johnson from future lawsuits involving its talc-based baby powder and alleged cancer risks.



Johnson &amp; Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h2>



50,000. That’s how many lawsuits Johnson &amp; Johnson faces over its talcum-based baby powder, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-certifies-johnson-johnson-shareholder-class-action-over-talc-disclosures-2023-12-29/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a>. Several cases allege the powder caused several forms of cancer, including ovarian and mesothelioma.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Johnson &amp; Johnson faces allegations it failed to properly warn consumers about potential health risks associated with its talc-based baby powder, including alleged cancer risks. Both Mississippi and New Mexico have sued the company over its marketing, as 42 states and the District of Columbia launched a joint investigation, <a href="https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000200406/a0c68a93-e699-45d6-b3e7-311e8f9c43bb.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a> to a securities filing. Attorneys general from several states, including Arizona, North Carolina and Texas, have requested additional information from the company about its marketing tactics, the filing said. Johnson &amp; Johnson—which denies claims against its powder—<a href="https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-subsidiary-to-appeal-bankruptcy-court-ruling-that-deprived-talc-claimants-of-an-equitable-and-efficient-resolution" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">set aside</a> $8.9 billion in its bankruptcy filing last year to resolve some 40,000 cases, though that plan was subsequently <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-17/j-j-weighs-third-bankruptcy-to-resolve-tainted-baby-powder-suits" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shot down</a> by a New Jersey judge.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT</h2>



In 2018, a Missouri court&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/business/johnson-johnson-talcum-powder.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ordered</a>&nbsp;Johnson &amp; Johnson to pay nearly $4.7 billion to 22 women claiming asbestos in the company’s talcum powder was linked to their cases of ovarian cancer. The judge involved in the case suggested the company had “misrepresented the safety of these products for decades.” Johnson &amp; Johnson appealed the ruling, though the effort was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/06/01/supreme-court-wont-hear-johnson--johnson-challenge-of-2-billion-baby-powder-lawsuit/?sh=1441441e3d6e">shot down&nbsp;</a>by the Supreme Court.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-08/j-j-to-pay-700-million-to-settle-states-talc-marketing-probe?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=business&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_source=twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">J&amp;J To Pay $700 Million To Settle States’ Talc-Marketing Probe</a>&nbsp;(Bloomberg)

Johnson & Johnson Reaches Settlement In 8.9 Billion Dollar Lawsuit Over Products Containing Talcum Powder

Johnson & Johnson Will Pay $700 Million To Resolve Baby Powder Marketing Probe, Report Says

Many workplaces are experiencing a rise in “pleasanteeism” as the cost-of-living crisis takes its toll on the mental health of employees.



Pleasanteeism refers to the pressure an individual feels to put on a brave face in front of colleagues, regardless of their emotional state.



Not only does pleasanteeism compromise the overall mental wellbeing of employees but it can impact badly on workplace productivity.



All businesses are trying to be more open about emotional wellbeing and establish better support structures for employees, break stigmas and encourage conversations.



While the stiff upper lip mentality is slowly being broken down, many people still feel the pressure to put on a brave face when they feel less than optimal.



Pleasanteeism is on display when employees put up a front – and act as if everything is going well for them – even when they are stressed, anxious, under pressure or in need of support.



Those who have succumbed to this affliction wear a mask of pleasantries to hide their true feelings.



Their aim in concealing emotional turmoil and stress is to avoid coming across as disruptive and problematic to colleagues, especially those in charge.



While many bosses appreciate employees who are regarded as low maintenance, hiding one’s poor mental health represents a false economy.



When employees suffer in silence and are not working at their optimal level, it will impact on an organization in both the short and long term – quite apart from the damage this charade is doing to the individual.



It is not hard to understand why pleasanteeism – sometimes called faked cheerfulness – has taken hold of some workplaces.



Cost-of-living concerns following on so closely from the pandemic, combined with overwork and growing job insecurity, have combined to create not just a perfect storm of worry and anxiety but a category four cyclone.



So strong are the gusts of economic headwinds that they have the potential to rattle – and upend – those individuals with deeply rooted positive dispositions to life and work.



At the same time, there have been even stronger calls for people to become more resilient and ride out tough times.



This has meant many have felt themselves torn between sharing their worries and concerns with others or just putting on a brave face.



Many are choosing the pleasanteeism pathway because we still tend to value positivity over negativity.



From a young age, we are taught to banish so-called bad feelings and pick ourselves up when we fail or fall. We are told to stop whingeing, soldier on, stop being negative and look on the bright side.



As we age, we become part of fix-it-fast cultures that embrace FONO, or the fear of a negative outlook.



FONO makes us drown out negative vibes with buckets of contrived positivity and false reassurances when we tell our colleagues that we are “perfectly okay”.



And when we encounter employees who are brave enough to tell us they are experiencing challenging situations, instead of empathizing with them we are increasingly opting for a toxic quick fix that dismisses the slightest sniff of negativity.



We have become accustomed to pouring overly positive vibes on emotions such as fear, sadness, loneliness or anger to push those who are struggling towards a state of false cheerfulness.



We tell them “everything happens for a reason”, “others have it worse” or “just think positive thoughts” instead of reassuring them that it is actually okay to not be okay.



When a workplace embraces and supports pleasanteeism rather than the expression of raw feelings, employees are denied the chance to feel and express what is going on inside them.



Suppression of those feelings further amplifies the internal feeling of negativity.



Many of the worries and concerns of our colleagues are triggered by factors outside the workplace – and often linked to financial concerns. But just because they are created externally does not mean they will not come flooding into our workplaces.



We should open the door to what is on our colleagues’ minds. Simply being there to listen can make a world of difference.



Although mental wellbeing is more front of mind in workplaces than ever before, many colleagues remain unprepared to talk openly about their problems. The truth is we still have a long way to go to remove the fear of being judged or even punished for being honest about expressing that our health is not as rosy as our pretence suggests.

The Unpleasant Truth About The Pleasanteeism Crisis

How’s this for irony? Slack, whose workplace messaging app has at some point prompted many employees to feel the tug of responding after hours, has a warning: People who feel obligated to work after hours also tend to be less productive.



New&nbsp;<a href="https://slack.com/blog/news/the-surprising-connection-between-after-hours-work-and-decreased-productivity" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey data</a>&nbsp;from Slack’s&nbsp;<a href="https://slack.com/resources/collections/workforce-lab" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Workplace Lab</a>, which queried some 10,000 desk-based employees, found that people who log off at the end of the work day reported 20% higher productivity scores than those who feel the pressure to work after hours. Unsurprisingly, those who felt the need to log on after hours reported twice the work-related stress and burnout levels as their unplugged peers. (Those who chose to work late by choice, meanwhile, whether for scheduling reasons or because of personal ambitions, reported no downsides.)



The survey results—a continuation of Slack’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2022/10/20/as-economic-concerns-rise-executives-are-reporting-record-high-stress-and-defaulting-to-old-office-habits/?sh=28ebb5c5594c">Future Forum research</a>, which was widely cited throughout the pandemic—comes at the end of a year when many CEOs, all in the name of greater productivity, have been pushing a do-more-with-less mentality and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2023/08/19/the-war-over-work-from-home-the-data-ceos-and-workers-need-to-know/?sh=208cb2aa6afa">return-to-office mandates</a>&nbsp;that have many workers frustrated by workplace distractions and longer hours spent commuting. But in effect, such efforts could be making productivity worse.



“The conventional wisdom for productivity has always been if you want to produce more, just work more,” says Christina Janzer, senior vice president of research and analytics and the head of Slack’s Workforce Lab, which does research and experiments about improving ways of working. “This is our opportunity to myth-bust. More hours don’t necessarily mean better productivity.”



Janzer admits that while Slack has do-not-disturb settings, status updates and scheduled send tools, “there’s still more work for us to do to encourage them and make them more visible.” Still, it’s ultimately “up to the company and the team and the culture to really establish those ground rules,” she says.



Slack’s survey comes from self-reported answers rather than specific measures of study participants’ productivity or their number of work hours. It found that those who felt obligated to work after hours were 50% more likely to say they have too many competing priorities than those who work traditional hours; meanwhile, employees who worked longer hours reported similar daytime efficiency to those who worked a typical schedule, suggesting managers aren’t doing enough to prioritize work and prevent a sense of overload, Janzer says. For many organizations, the latest data shows “there’s a really big opportunity for managers to play a bigger role in helping people prioritize and take the time that they spend at work and make it time well spent,” says Janzer.



The survey also found that desk workers reported a “goldilocks zone” of four hours a day as an ideal amount of time for focused work, and that more than two hours of meetings is the point at which they feel overburdened. Meanwhile, half of desk workers surveyed said they rarely or never take breaks during the work day.



The survey’s finding about long hours and productivity is hardly new. Academic research has long shown that beyond a certain point, extra hours can lead to productivity declines. A 2014&nbsp;<a href="https://docs.iza.org/dp8129.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>, for instance, found that employee output falls sharply after a 50-hour work-week, and then falls precipitously after 55 hours. A Boston University&nbsp;<a href="https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for-people-and-for-companies" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;of consultants, meanwhile, found that managers couldn’t tell the difference between those who actually worked 80 hours a week and those who pretended to do so. Then there’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2021-long-working-hours-increasing-deaths-from-heart-disease-and-stroke-who-ilo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">research</a>&nbsp;from the World Health Organization, which concludes that working 55 or more hours per week is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease.



Yet at a time when hybrid work arrangements and an influx of technology allows people to rethink the patterns and practices of work, it’s a reminder that there are alternatives to simply pushing longer hours to get more out of people. “Productivity is not linear,” says Janzer, noting that 75% of survey respondents said they experience a productivity slump in the afternoons between 3 and 6 pm. “There’s these opportunities to really think about how people are spending and structuring their day.”



Slack’s survey also found that those who reported the most productivity were more likely to say they used time management strategies like blocking time for specific tasks, only checking email at specific times and setting timers to keep themselves focused. Slack is experimenting with some productivity tools itself: Recently, Janzer’s team had a “speedy meetings week” where it halved the length of all meetings—all 30-minute slots were scheduled for 15, for instance—to see how much time was really required. The company also has “maker weeks” twice each quarter, in which meetings are temporarily lifted from the calendar to rethink which ones work and which don’t.



“It’s a great forcing function,” Janzer says. “You’re able to really accomplish a lot from a productivity standpoint. But the second thing is it forces you to work in different ways. What you thought had to be a 30-minute meeting you realize actually [could] be an asynchronous post in Slack.” Or, as many have noted, an email.

Tired Black man, sleeping and burnout from working at night by office desk suffering stress or overworked. Exhausted African American male asleep on table by computer for long work hours at workplace

Feel Pressure To Work After Hours? You May Be Less Productive, Not More.

It’s bad enough that fintech startups have to grapple with the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/04/27/finding-vc-funding-is-harder-now-for-startups/?sh=581ae6da7e82">challenge</a>&nbsp;of competing for funds in a global venture capital market that&#8217;s experiencing a funding drought. There is an extra hurdle for those using foreign capital to create new financial products in Nigeria: the value of the country’s currency has fallen 43% over the past year alone thanks to recent currency reform.



Nigeria is Africa’s biggest economy–it’s home to more than 220 million people and the continent’s&nbsp;<a href="https://disrupt-africa.com/2023/02/09/nigeria-is-the-clear-leader-for-african-startup-funding-yet-a-trickle-down-is-happening/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">leading destination</a>&nbsp;for startup funding. A substantial portion of its financial transactions still occur in cash, creating a fertile ground for the development of multiple fintech solutions.



“There is a bit of instability happening in the country right now,” says Luci Fonseca, lead partner at San Francisco-based Base10 Partners, which has funded multiple Nigerian businesses, including payments startups Nomba and Okra and e-commerce firm Bumpa. “It creates a number of challenges for a business that charges in naira and reports its revenue in U.S. dollars.”



The massive depreciation of the local currency puts pressure on businesses in multiple ways, according to Gbenga Ajayi, lead partner at VC firm QED<a href="https://www.forbes.com/investment-funds/qed/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">QED</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/investment-funds/qed/">0.0%</a>&nbsp;Investors, where he focuses on investing in African startups, including payments startup Moniepoint and pharmaceutical management firm Remedial Health. Ajayi said that access to foreign exchange is “one of the biggest challenges” that investors face in the market.



“If you&#8217;re from Nigeria, from Egypt, or even from Kenya, you&#8217;re very much aware that when your currency starts to depreciate, it affects spending power, purchasing power, and there is just a lot of uncertainty,” says Ajayi.



Last year, African startups raised 227 rounds of funding, according to <a href="https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/PSx0CNk7A3slxG1nI4XZuL?domain=cbinsights.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CB Insights</a>, 174 of which went to Nigerian companies. More than 80% of the investors who financed Nigerian businesses this year before the foreign exchange market&#8217;s liberalization were based outside the country, according to PitchBook data, underscoring the significance of foreign capital within the country’s business landscape.



Nomba raised $30 million in May 2023, largely funded by foreign venture capitalists at a valuation of $148 million, according to PitchBook. Lagos-based e-commerce startup Sabi secured $38 million in May at a $300 million valuation, while electronic medical records provider Helium<a href="https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/assets/helium-hnt/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HNT</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/assets/helium-hnt/">0.0%</a>&nbsp;Health got $30 million in a Series B round in June. For outfits like embedded payments firm OnePipe, which secured $4.5 million in debt capital in March, it could make repayment more challenging than envisaged.



Some of the strategies startups are employing to manage currency risks include attracting more customers who transact in dollars; paying local employees, vendors and partners with naira reserves; and adding fees for customers who make payments in naira.



“The startups that are mitigating the reform best are those that already started hedging against the naira even before the reform,” says Mathew Saunders, head of investment at venture capital firm Future Africa. Another method he has seen companies use is “diversifying the customer base to include more international players that can make payment in dollar equivalents,” he says.



Currencies in China, India, Turkey, and Argentina are among the major emerging market currencies that have also come under pressure this year, driven in part by a stronger U.S. dollar. But the situation takes a different turn in African nations such as Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya, which are finding it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/segunolakoyenikan/2023/07/02/africa-becomes-a-casualty-in-the-war-against-inflation-as-dollars-dry-up/?sh=42bd034755f1">increasingly difficult</a>&nbsp;to obtain hard currencies like dollars, pounds or euros.



For countries like Nigeria, which has a long history of supplying dollars to the foreign exchange market to keep the local currency stable, the limited dollar reserves make it challenging for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to meet the demand of dollars for transactions like imports, where suppliers often require payment in dollars.



Authorities allowed the pegged naira currency to trade more freely in June after foreign reserves fell further to $34 billion from $39 billion a year earlier. With only 35% of the current reserves available for use, according to Abdulazeez Kuranga, macroeconomic strategist at Lagos-based Cordros Securities, “the low liquidity position clarifies why the CBN’s FX supply to the official windows has been underwhelming.”



Since the devaluation on June 14, 2023, the value of the naira has dropped a whopping 40% against the United States dollar in the official window, the currency market where government transactions occur. With inflation at 24% in July, a weaker service demand could potentially put a strain on startups’ revenue and, subsequently, their valuations, especially since some of them generate earnings in naira but report their financials in U.S. dollars.



Nigeria’s central bank authorities say all hands are on deck to stabilize the exchange rate. However, should the currency situation fail to improve, startups backed by foreign capital would have to intensify efforts to significantly boost earnings in order to assuage the impact of the devalued naira or come up with strategies to mitigate these risks.

Nigerian Naira Currency And General Economy As Country Set To Exit Recession

Nigeria’s Sliding Currency Leaves Foreign-Backed Startups In Limbo

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Billionaire Elon Musk—the owner of X, previously known as Twitter—made a broad offer in a tweet late Saturday night, saying the platform will fund legal fees for people who “were unfairly treated” by their employers because of something they posted or liked on X.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Musk added in the tweet that there was “no limit” to the amount of fees X would cover and said in a following&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1688051512843395072" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweet</a>&nbsp;that X “won’t just sue, it will be extremely loud and we will go after the boards of directors of the companies too.”



Musk has responded to a number of replies to his initial offering, including&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1688035428194988032" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">one</a>&nbsp;from right-wing account “Libs of TikTok” that claimed someone was fired for following its account and another that said former President Donald Trump was “unfairly treated” by the government for his Twitter usage, to which Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1688089619970088960" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;“such aggressive legal action against a former president is not right.”



There were no details provided on how Musk defined “unfairly treated” or how people should contact the former executive, and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/bernybelvedere/status/1688025090925948928" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">some</a>&nbsp;have pointed out the offer could apply to Twitter employees who were fired shortly after Musk’s takeover.



It’s unclear what prompted Musk to make the offer, but it came shortly after a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/05/sport/nascar-noah-gragson-suspended-spt/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NASCAR driver was suspended</a>&nbsp;for allegedly liking a meme on Instagram mocking George Floyd.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Musk, who first arrived at Twitter after buying the platform in October 2022, immediately made headlines for firing thousands in cost saving measures and for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/technology/elon-musk-twitter-fired-criticism.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">firing</a>&nbsp;people who were openly critical of him. One employee was&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/twitter-musk-iceland-fired-wheelchair-haraldur-employee-0329405846dac8f1f08ac55594881bb6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">publicly mocked</a>&nbsp;by Musk after he tweeted about being cut off from access to his work computer, leading Musk to eventually&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633253950198624257" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">apologize</a>&nbsp;to the employee and tweet that he’s “considering remaining at Twitter.” Since Musk’s takeover—and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/07/23/elon-musk-directs-xcom-to-twitter-plans-to-ditch-twitter-bird/">rebranding</a>—of X, the platform has undergone a number of changes and struggles. Musk has maintained a focus on freedom of speech and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1602278477234728960?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fighting</a>&nbsp;what he calls the “woke mind virus,” leading him to loosen X’s moderation policies and reinstate formerly banned accounts. Advertisers weren’t happy about the policy change, though, and Musk saw many back out of deals with the platform in response. One U.K.-based nonprofit&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/07/31/twitter-threatens-legal-action-against-nonprofit-for-claiming-hate-speech-rose-after-musks-takeover/?sh=320994364061">penned a report</a>&nbsp;last year finding X rarely removed hateful content posted by subscribers to the site’s paid Twitter Blue service, leading the social media company to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2023/08/03/elon-musk-is-suing-a-nonprofit-that-researches-hate-speech-for-driving-away-advertisers/?sh=613993835ea7">sue the group</a>&nbsp;last week.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



In another late-night&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1688091377823895552" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweet</a>&nbsp;from the weekend, Musk announced his much-anticipated UFC-style&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/07/12/zuckerberg-vs-musk-everything-we-know-about-the-possible-cage-fight/?sh=3e7845ef2cc8">fight</a>&nbsp;with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/08/06/elon-musk-says-fight-with-zuckerberg-will-be-live-streamed-on-x-for-charity/?sh=2dcbe26f711c">livestreamed</a>&nbsp;on X and “all proceeds will go to charity for veterans.” Musk and Zuckerberg have been teasing a fight since&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1671364992665264131'" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">June</a>, shortly before Meta released its Twitter-competitor, Threads.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">FORBES VALUATION</h2>



Forbes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=11dfda637999">estimates</a>&nbsp;Musk to be worth $232.5 billion, making him the richest person in the world as of August 6.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/technology/elon-musk-twitter-fired-criticism.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NYTIMESElon Musk Fires Twitter Employees Who Criticized Him</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/08/06/elon-musk-says-fight-with-zuckerberg-will-be-live-streamed-on-x-for-charity/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MORE FROM FORBESElon Musk Says Fight With Zuckerberg Will Be Live-Streamed On X For CharityBy Mary Whitfill Roeloffs</a>

Billionaire Elon Musk Receives Axel Springer Award

Elon Musk Promises To Cover Legal Fees For People Fired Over Tweets

Chatbots are increasingly being used by companies to interview and screen job applicants, often for blue collar jobs. But like other algorithmic hiring tools before them, experts and job applicants worry these tools could be biased.



In early June, Amanda Claypool was looking for a job at a fast-food restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. But she faced an unexpected and annoying hurdle: glitchy chatbot recruiters.



A few examples: McDonald’s chatbot recruiter “Olivia” cleared Claypool for an in-person interview, but then failed to schedule it because of technical issues. A Wendy’s bot managed to schedule her for an in-person interview but it was for a job she couldn&#8217;t do. Then a Hardees chatbot sent her to interview with a store manager who was on leave — hardly a seamless recruiting strategy.



“I showed up at Hardees and they were kind of surprised. The crew operating the restaurant had no idea what to do with me or how to help me,” Claypool, who ultimately took a job elsewhere, told&nbsp;Forbes.&nbsp;“It seemed like a more complicated thing than it had to be,” she said. (McDonald’s and Hardees didn’t respond to a comment request. A Wendy’s spokesperson told Forbes the bot creates “hiring efficiencies,” adding “innovation is our DNA.”)



HR chatbots like the ones Claypool encountered are increasingly being used in industries like healthcare, retail and restaurants to filter out unqualified applicants and schedule interviews with the ones who might be right for the job. McDonalds, Wendy’s, CVS Health and Lowes use&nbsp;<a href="https://www.paradox.ai/solutions/restaurant" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Olivia</a>, a chatbot developed by Arizona-based $1.5 billion AI startup Paradox. Other companies like L’Oreal rely on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/29/tech/ai-recruitment-loreal/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mya</a>, an AI chatbot developed in San Francisco by a startup of the same name. (Paradox didn’t respond to a comment request about Claypool’s experience.)



Most hiring chatbots are not as advanced or elaborate as contemporary conversational chatbots like ChatGPT. They’ve primarily been used to screen for jobs that have a high-volume of applicants — cashiers, warehouse associates and customer service assistants. They are rudimentary and ask fairly straightforward questions: “Do you know how to use a forklift?” or “Are you able to work weekends?” But as Claypool found, these bots can be buggy — and there isn’t always a human to turn to when something goes wrong. And the clear-cut answers many of the bots require could mean automatic rejection for some qualified candidates who might not answer questions like a large language model wants them to.



That could be a problem for people with disabilities, people who are not proficient in English and older job applicants, experts say. Aaron Konopasky, senior attorney advisor at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), fears chatbots like Olivia and Mya may not provide people with disabilities or medical conditions with alternative options for availability or job roles. “If it&#8217;s a human being that you&#8217;re talking to, there&#8217;s a natural opportunity to talk about reasonable accommodations,” he told Forbes. “If the chatbot is too rigid, and the person needs to be able to request some kind of exemption, then the chatbot might not give them the opportunity to do that.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“It&#8217;s sort of like how Netflix recommends movies based on other movies you like.”Jeremy Schiff, CEO and founder of RecruitBot
</blockquote>



Discrimination is another concern. Underlying prejudice in data used to train AI can bake bias and discrimination into the tools in which it&#8217;s deployed. “If the chatbot is looking at things like how long it takes you to respond, or whether you’re using correct grammar and complex sentences, that&#8217;s where you start worrying about bias coming in,” said Pauline Kim, a employment and labor law professor at Washington University, whose research focuses on the use of AI in hiring tools. But such bias can be tough to detect when companies aren&#8217;t transparent about why a potential candidate was rejected.



Recently, government authorities have introduced legislation to monitor and regulate the use of automation in hiring tools. In early July,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-starts-to-regulate-ai-used-in-hiring-tools-79a2260f?mod=djemalertNEWS" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York City</a>&nbsp;enacted a new law requiring employers who use automated tools like resume scanners and chatbot interviews to audit their tools for gender and racial bias. In 2020,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bakersterchi.com/new-illinois-statute-among-the-first-to-address-aiaided-job-recruiting" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Illinois</a>&nbsp;passed a law requiring employers who apply AI to analyze video interviews to notify applicants and obtain consent.



Still, for companies looking to trim recruiting costs, AI screening agents seem an obvious option. HR departments are often one of the first places to see staff reductions, said Matthew Scherer, a senior policy counsel for workers’ rights and technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Human resources has always been a cost center for a company, it&#8217;s never been a revenue generating thing,” he explained. “Chatbots are a very logical first step to try and take some of the load off of recruiters.”



That’s part of the rationale behind Sense HQ, which provides companies like Sears, Dell and Sony with text messaging-based AI chatbots that help their recruiters wade through thousands of applicants. The company claims it’s already been used by some 10 million job applicants, and co-founder Alex Rosen told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;such numbers mean a much bigger pool of viable candidates.



“The reason that we built a chatbot in the first place was to help recruiters talk to a wider swath of candidates than they might be able to do on their own,” he said, adding the obligatory caveat: “We don&#8217;t think that the AI should be making the hiring decision on its own. That’s where it gets dangerous. We just don&#8217;t think that it&#8217;s there yet.”



RecruitBot is bringing AI to bear on hiring by using machine learning to sift through a database of 600 million job applicants scraped from LinkedIn and other job marketplaces — all with the goal of helping companies find job candidates similar to their current employees. &#8220;It&#8217;s sort of like how Netflix recommends movies based on other movies you like,” CEO and founder Jeremy Schiff told&nbsp;Forbes.&nbsp;But here too bias is an obvious concern; hiring more of the same has its pitfalls. In 2018,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight-idUSKCN1MK08G" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amazon</a>&nbsp;removed its machine learning-based resume tracking system that discriminated against women because its training data was mostly composed of resumes of men.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Chatbots are a very logical first step to try and take some of the load off of recruiters.”Matthew Scherer, senior policy counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology
</blockquote>



Urmila Janardan, a policy analyst at Upturn, a nonprofit which researches how technologies impact opportunities for people, noted that some companies have also turned to personality tests to weed out candidates — and the questions to screen candidates may not be related to the job at all. “You might even be potentially rejected from the job because of questions about gratitude and personality,” she said.



For Rick Gned, a part-time painter and writer, a personality quiz was part of a chatbot interview he did for an hourly-wage shelf-stacking job at Australian supermarket, Woolworths. The chatbot, made by AI recruitment firm Sapia AI (formerly known as PredictiveHire), asked him to provide 50- to 150-word answers for five questions and then analyzed his responses, looking for&nbsp;<a href="https://sapia.ai/products/interview/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">traits</a>&nbsp;and skills that match the recruiters’ preferences. Concluding that Gned “deals well with change,” and is “more focused on the big picture that causes him to look over details,” it advanced him to the next round interview. While Sapia AI does not require applicants to respond to questions under a time limit, the system measures sentence structure, readability and complexity of words used in the text responses, Sapia AI CEO and cofounder Barb Hyman said in an email.



Gned found the whole thing dehumanizing and worrisome, he told Forbes. “I’m in a demographic where it doesn’t affect me, but I’m worried for people who are minorities, who predominantly make up the lower-income labor market.”



For one job applicant, who requested anonymity to speak freely, chatting with a bot had at least one positive. When filling hundreds of job applications, he often never hears back, but the bot at least assured him that his application was received. “It did feel like a morale boost in so many ways,” he said. “But if I had to do this (text with a chatbot) with every job I applied to, it would be a pain in the ass.”

Teamwork in metaverse with Cyber City skyline

AI Chatbots Are The New Job Interviewers

Early this year, there was talk about Hollywood A-lister Idris Elba looking to build a major movie studio in Tanzania. More homegrown filmmakers and professionals are also working to create new paradigm shifts and give the African film industry the boost and blockbuster attention it deserves.



The experience of every filmmaker in Africa is – creating stories from the ground up, immersing themselves in the communities they are in, telling stories and working laboriously with crew who only have the conviction of their art to keep going. Most times, you are on a tight budget and with limited infrasructure, but you make it work and try and get on to the festival circuit too. But grants are limited and so also distribution networks. Such is the story of the film industry in most parts of the continent, despite the zeal and enthusiasm from creatives on the continent, as well as their supporters abroad.



For renowned Tanzanian filmmaker, Amil Shivji, these issues hit close to home.



While he has been able to make significant progress on multiple big movies locally, he often had to outsource editing to a different country, for instance, or struggle with the infrastructure and crew available. And for the students he teaches at the University of Dar es Salaam, making a film of festival-caliber seems like a distant dream – at least for now.



“Our students don&#8217;t have access to equipment, they have to do a lot of theory and are unable to get production experience – the markets are the ones that dictate the kind of content that&#8217;s coming out,” he rues. “But the markets are dependent on the infrastructure as well… we are losing out on making original productions and telling our own stories.”



There is funding for filmmaking and infrastructure building coming in especially from the NGO sector, but they have agendas that do not always give filmmakers the flexibility to tell their own stories, he adds.



“I mean, take your pick, there is help needed across the board – financing, infrastructure, training, distribution. There&#8217;s a lot of work that needs to be done,” echoes Tambay Obenson, an African-American filmmaker, journalist and entrepreneur of Nigerian and Cameroonian descent, who started Akoroko, a subscription streaming service that offers a hand-picked and curated selection of arthouse, independent, and international films telling African stories, supported by contextual materials.



For Ethiopian-American filmmaker, Mehret Mandefro, despite her film, Difret (2014) being the first film to win the audience awards at both the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlinale Panorama, and be selected as Ethiopia’s submission to the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Annual Academy Awards, she struggled to find her audience and distribution in Africa, despite telling an important story of a young Ethiopian girl and a tenacious lawyer embroiled in a life-or-death clash&nbsp;between cultural traditions and their country’s advancement of equal rights.



Obenson emphasizes that the underappreciation of African cinema at home and abroad is the reason he started Akoroko.



“As an African, I almost also kind of felt like I was coming home, metaphorically, figuratively, to do this. I&#8217;ve been in the business for so long, and this is the first time that I decided to really focus on Africa. I decided to do it for those reasons. There&#8217;s a need and I&#8217;m passionate about the art form. And as an African, I think there&#8217;s a lot of work that could be done.”



Yet the industry varies so much across the continent, making the challenge of building a robust film industry and culture from the ground up even more difficult. “I wouldn’t even use the word industry, I&#8217;ll say African film industries, says Obenson. “Some countries are more developed and have more prominent industries than others.”



Nigeria, home to Nollywood, boasts the most-prominent and varied industry of its kind today.



&nbsp;Northern Africa with Arab cinema has also been active since the 1950s. And then, there is South Africa, featuring a strong service industry and large production and post-production operations.



Kenya is also an up-and-coming industry with a strong middle class and making waves in the film festival circuit.



It is no surprise that large streaming services like Netflix have made these regions their new hubs for investment and talent development, notes Shivji.



Netflix’s socio-economic impact report for Africa released in April highlights key productions and an investment of $175 million in content and the local creative ecosystems in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya combined.



But Netflix seems to be aiming for more.



“At Netflix, our work is not only about investing in local creative partners to produce exciting stories and bringing them to members around the world – it’s also investing in skills development and capacity, building opportunities that will ultimately contribute to the growth of Africa’s film and TV industries. This is a work in progress, and we’re excited to be a key part of this journey on the African continent,” says Ben Amadasun, Director of Content, Middle East and Africa at Netflix, to FORBES AFRICA.



While veterans like Mandefro have been trying to build out these ecosystems in a pan-African way with the co-founding of spaces like the Realness Institute, one of the continent’s best incubators for African filmmakers, she sees Netflix as a significant partner in creating opportunities for filmmakers on the ground.



“[Netflix] is thinking about upstream stuff, trying to incentivize and help out who goes into film in the first place. And then also really thinking about all those things that you need, like the story editors and development executives in order to build out a market,” emphasizes Mandefro. “So, I think that&#8217;s really commendable.”



But for filmmakers like Shivji, such reports and promises come with a grain of salt. For him, the growing middle class in Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya already bolster Netflix’s subscriber base, leaving out many other countries.



“We are selling ourselves short to just have one country from each region. We should really get past the stage of just being happy with what we&#8217;re given and be able to argue for more, because this is a platform that prides itself on showing international films. So, we want to be able to show more films, and we want to sell our films to Netflix and be able to get a fair deal,” he says.



And if not a Western financing giant like Netflix, then who?



“It&#8217;s really coverage and access. African cinema has been grossly undervalued on the international stage and international film marketplace,” says Obenson. There is the need to tell African stories to the world, and despite the content overload for audiences, governments need to step up, he emphasizes. Not only are there few film journalists, but the consistency is also missing as also the incentives for filmmakers to excel.



Obenson believes self-funding and creating opportunities locally is the way forward, making it less easy for western institutions to dictate African storytelling. “As a whole, I think that the potential is just immense,” he adds. “And the rest of the world is increasingly interested in African stories.



“…just to allow African filmmakers to be able to tell African stories in Africa with African money without having to rely on others.”



There is more than one reason this matters. “We as Africans need to start to value filmmaking as a craft and as an art form and recognize the power of storytelling. We talk about soft power; the United States has been using this since the beginning of Hollywood,” he says.



“Hollywood films travel, they dominate theaters across the world. I don’t know if African films will ever get there, we will get there but just realizing that there is power in the fact that filmmakers can have an impact on how the rest of the world sees the continent.”



And while Mandefro recognizes more African countries setting up film commissions, there is a need to acknowledge the urgency western institutions are already seeing while rushing to the continent. Africa has a median age of 19 years and consumer spending is set to reach&nbsp;$2.5 trillion by 2030, and by 2050, a quarter of the world&#8217;s population will be in Africa.



“Every business, if you don&#8217;t have an Africa strategy, you&#8217;re gonna miss out on a lot of growth, or potential for growth.”



Yet, unemployment levels are high on the continent, up to 60% on average, according to the World Bank.



“Investing in stories means increasing exposure for all of the countries, it does more for tourism than anything else. And I often, when I find myself in policy circles, talk a lot about investing in storytellers, investing in films, TV and media. The media entrepreneurs are really the new infrastructure investment. This is where the jobs of the future are coming from, especially for young people,” says Mandefro.



“So, governments need to be really smart about incentivizing and setting some policies up that make it easier for these entrepreneurs to be successful, so it means not being so heavy-handed with regulations, for instance.”



Shivji also mentions the importance of building state-funded film festivals and institutionalizing them, especially as something filmmakers can always fall back on.



“This is where we&#8217;re able to educate new audiences, we&#8217;re able to travel with the films, we&#8217;re able to invite new filmmakers and new artists. And those collaborations are happening at festivals for filmmakers almost half of your life. It&#8217;s where you really build your career, you&#8217;re able to network and all the events around it are super important,” he opines.



But whether it is cinema under the stars in the middle of an open field, or a phone on a commute in the daily bustle of the city, or in the comfort of your home or at the theater, African cinema is finding its place, both on the festival circuit and in people’s hearts across the globe.



“This is the golden age of African cinema. Our continent has great talent and world-class creatives,” echoes Amadasun.



“Whether you liked or hated Black Panther, it certainly did something for the world. It&#8217;s like people discovered Africa all of a sudden. But that&#8217;s how it works when you&#8217;re not exposed. And so, I think it’s the appetite,” says Mandefro.



“And even the realization that storytelling has been so incredibly closed for so long, right? There were no real global stories in the sense of, like us being able to consume, so this is where obviously platforms like Netflix have also changed the game. So, a series like the Squid Games makes us realize there&#8217;s a whole world out there.”



Yet, for Shivji, the focus should remain on the development of authentic African cinema, which can be poetic, experimental, and give a platform to independent African stories.



“Film is supposed to be a mirror to our society and present our culture… African filmmakers need to always be at the decision-making table,” he adds.



Obenson hopes these new shifts in the industry work to inspire local favor towards financing films and film infrastructure, whether that is local companies, local production companies or just local financiers.



“Let&#8217;s put our heads together and try to create something that competes [abroad],” he says. “I&#8217;m hopeful as there is a paradigm shift. I think there&#8217;s no going back from here.”



The development of cinema continues to be challenging, but there is a bright light at the end of the cinematic tunnel.



“One of my pet peeves is, you know, development doesn&#8217;t happen in Africa,” says Mandefro. “In many ways, there&#8217;s never been a better time to be an African filmmaker.”

Young Black Man Operating Video Camera

The Big Ticket: New Paradigm Shifts In African Cinema

If the thought of being told to fly something up the flagpole, put on a record to see who dances or stir-fry things in the ideas wok makes you want to lose your lunch, you are not alone.



Jargon monoxide – a dangerous concoction of distasteful, pungent and sometimes colorful language – is seeping into workplaces to create nauseating conditions for those forced to inhale the noxious fumes.



Every workplace has its fair share of jargon, buzzwords, bizspeak and abbreviations.



Sometimes the language serves a useful purpose like condensing a complicated process into a single word or phrase to save time.



But when it slips out of the boss’ mouth once too often it is usually for the wrong reasons, which is when jargon monoxide poisoning takes place.



More and more workers have been “circling back” only to discover their boss’ misused business babble has created unnecessary “pain points”.&nbsp;



This has arisen from those in charge either failing to “bring to the table” some “fully baked”, “out-of-the-box thinking”, “putting lipstick on a pig” to camouflage the truth or disguising the fact they are simply not capable of doing the “heavy lifting”. &nbsp;



In other words, workers are being contaminated by jargon-mongering bosses who seem intent on using the latest cringeworthy cliches to hide the truth, cover up stuff-ups or obscure the fact they lack what it takes to get the job done.



It is necessary to “drill down”, “unpack” or “open the kimono” to get a “high-altitude view” on how workers are exposed to jargon monoxide on a daily basis.



The truth is many bosses allow gobbledygook to seep from their mouths and into the workplace to conceal the fact they are not “best of breed”: in other words, to obscure their ineptness.



So when “parking a project” rolls of your boss’ tongue, it probably means an initiative was an unmitigated disaster under their direction.



If the same boss suggests there has been a “wrong-siding of the demographic”, it is safe to assume their poor public relations caused customers to become extremely disgruntled.



Other bosses restrict their polluting ways to using buzzwords to disguise negative messages and, in doing so, compromise transparency.



Some bosses substitute the term “redundancy” with the likes of “trimming the fat”, “cutting capacity”, “delayering”, “downsizing”, “right-sizing”, “right-shoring” and “moving to an outsourced model” – all jargon used to make sacking staff sound more palatable than it actually is.&nbsp;



And you might have noticed how many bosses resort to “going forward” (or its close relation “moving forward”) when they have no clue about what they ought to do in the aftermath of a challenging situation like a pandemic, public relations nightmare or financial crisis but still need to say something.



“Going forward” conveys that an embattled boss is leading their people on a purposeful path to a brighter future.&nbsp;



Yet the overused phrase is ambiguous in relation to specific actions, timelines and accountability and could easily be substituted with “I don’t have a clue what to do next”.



Perhaps of more concern is the fact that at the very time we are trying to reduce spiralling levels of antagonistic behavior, bullying and harassment in our workplaces, some bosses poison their workplaces with newfangled aggressive office speak just to appear as part of the “in-crowd”.



Common phrases of aggression including “you smashed it”, “you are killing it” and “you crushed it” – somewhat ironically – are all buzzwords used to denote progress rather than destruction.



Think, too, about the impact on others of hearing the boss say “there is only one throat to choke”, the team is a “dysfunctional circular firing squad” or that you are a “decision sniper”.



Climbing the corporate ladder is often synonymous with losing the ability to speak or write clearly. The higher the climb, the greater the use of overblown language.



It should not be that way.



It might be time for all good bosses to “give 110 per cent”, “lean in” and take a closer “look under the bonnet” to get better “optics” on the impact of their poisonous prattle on those around them.



“At the end of the day” it is perhaps best to keep in mind that jargon monoxide is a language which can pollute and poison an otherwise healthy workplace.



For those in charge, do not let it loose. And for those lower down the “food chain” and at high risk of contamination, avoid breathing it in.



The writer and professor is CEO with the Australian Institute of Management Western Australia and a workplace and social affairs expert.

Co-workers having meeting with laptop in conference room

Time To Move The Needle On ‘Jargon Monoxide’ In Our Workplaces

We all live and we all die, what makes us different are the things we do and the impact of our actions on the world. When it comes to the human mindset, we only think in terms of human-dominated ecosystems. However, with the climate crisis now upon us, the environment is everybody’s business, especially for those in business.



For entrepreneurs and industrialists, the time has come to not just reflect but to put into meaningful action the values that drive work. It is time to think about impact not just on our species but the world in its entirety, to create entrepreneurship beyond the terminology of just buying and selling, and to truly understand that profit is an output, not a purpose.



Research suggests that companies that struggle to answer the purpose question, or that answer it only in terms of the hard metrics of profit, market share and shareholder returns are most likely to encounter lower employee engagement, higher turnover, an uninspiring work culture, and lack of respect for the environment and communities they operate in. This is irrespective of whether the company has prestige, market dominance or great potential for growth.



As per the Climate Risk Country Profiles developed by the World Bank Group, Nepal, where I live, and South Africa, both share climate vulnerabilities.



Nepal is experiencing changes in temperature and precipitation at a faster rate than the global average. From the loss of lives to the loss of livelihoods, natural hazards in different parts of the country put people and ecosystems in distress year after year.



What does climate risk really mean and how does it affect us? Climate risk is commonly defined as extreme changes in weather, floods, disasters, rising sea levels, erosion, biodiversity loss etc. Why does it matter is simple–because people suffer due to these risks, it changes how we live, it changes our health, our livelihoods, our environment.



And where do businesses factor in? The opening statement of a PricewaterhouseCoopers article reads: “The race for net zero has captured the imagination of countries and companies alike. And not a moment too soon: the latest report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds that greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) must peak no later than 2025 to avoid the most dangerous and irreversible effects of climate change.”



It goes on to state that companies are not paying enough attention to their decarbonization commitments. Citing what businesses can lose, the report gives the example of how extreme weather events can cost a business conglomerate several hundred million dollars as soon as 2030 due to supply chain disruption. The examples are many and eye-opening. Businesses are forced to give due consideration to reports and articles such as these not just for the financial implications on their operations but also because governments around the world are aligned to the Net Zero Commitment including the top polluters– the US, China, EU and India.



The private sector does have a crucial role in fighting climate change. From reducing the carbon footprint of their product to cultivating climateconscious practices at work, businesses need to tackle their climate and social impact.



Consumers must commit to eating, traveling, living and shopping more mindfully. 



Governments must pledge to tangible actions that go beyond policy discourse and debates. Even as the world feels increasingly complex and unpredictable, meaningful action is needed to maintain a natural balance in how we use our resources and treat the world we inhabit. 



Climate change then is not just an ecological, environmental, social or economic issue, it is really about our personal ethics and the choices we make from moment to moment.



We do not have another planet to move to, what then do we choose for our children and the generations to come?



The writer-photographer from Nepal who keeps the values of freedom and compassion at the core of her work

Businesswoman giving presentation in board room

‘The Environment Is Everybody’s Business, Especially For Those In Business’

How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.



“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”



This passage from American writer Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises perfectly summarizes the process almost every organization eventually faces. 



Or at least it did up until Tuesday, May 2. Because that was the day when ChatGPT claimed its first victim, the online education platform Chegg.



It seems gone are the days when companies could expect a death spiral of years and years before the CEOs called it a day. 



Blockbusters and Blackberry are two examples that spring to mind. But Chegg’s stock plummeted by more than 50% in just a few hours, and at the time of writing this piece, it was worth just a third of what it was prior to the launch of ChatGPT.



The reason of course, why every business ultimately fails is because the market shifts.



In Blackberry’s case, they lost out as consumers decided they didn’t want keyboards.



For Blockbusters, their customers decided to stay at home and stream.



And for Chegg, Wall Street is predicting that they will lose their students to generative AI.



What’s fascinating and scary though, is we have just entered a phase of business disruption that is exponential in nature. AI, Cloud, 5G, IoT and a host of other technologies are working perfectly in concert to allow anyone in the world to develop new products and services at a fraction of historical costs in record time.



ChatGPT is a case in point. 



On release, it registered 1 million users in one week and hit the 100 million mark within two months. That’s 5x faster than TikTok managed; 30x faster than Facebook. So with barriers falling left right and center because of technological advancements, what must boards do to improve their company’s survival chances?



If you guessed innovate, you are partially right. Boards absolutely need to impress on their executive teams the importance of doubling down on their innovation strategies.



But this will only work if boards think laterally about deliberate actions they can take to encourage their executive teams to become less hubristic.



Because leadership hubris is the catalyst of inertia, not innovation, and inertia is what ultimately kills most organizations. To be fair to executives, they operate in environments that encourage overconfidence.



When you are running a successful multi-billion dollar business, it’s not easy to consider the possibility that it could be fallible, or worse, that it might fail on your watch. I for one don’t know many CEOs who’ll admit they are fearful of being disrupted. And those that do typically fail to place the necessary disruptive business bets.



How can companies remove hubris from their executive teams? 



I humbly suggest by setting up environments that culture a certain amount of fear and a huge amount of curiosity. One of the best examples of a leadership team that encourages this is Amazon. Jeff Bezos is well-known for emphasizing the importance of staying paranoid and maintaining a sense of urgency.



In his 2017 shareholder letter he wrote: “Day 2 business is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.” 



The goal?



To encourage his team to continually think like a startup, not a multi-billion dollar listed entity. And this idea then gets consistently reinforced in a multitude of ways, ranging from their choice of building names



(Amazon’s head office is named Day 1) to how they encourage executives to make decisions carefully when the outcomes are irreversible, but quickly in all other instances (the two-door/ one-door model).



These systems and frameworks were deliberately introduced to encourage healthy levels of paranoia that in turn, helped motivate a culture of curiosity.



It should not be surprising when successful innovators state that “curiosity” is mission-critical. What is surprising is how knowing this, so few boards demand their leadership teams implement systems to agitate and encourage curiosity.



Perhaps this was acceptable when we lived in a world where change was glacial. But in a world where bankruptcy may skip the slowly part and just come suddenly, boards need to stop worrying about the risks of doing business and start cultivating leaders who understand the need to adapt or die and have the curiosity and courage to attempt to do just that. 



– The writer curates thought leadership events that help executive teams transform their organizations; visit coliniles.com.

Adapt Or Die: What Must Boards Do To Improve Their Company’s Survival Chances?

It’s been just over six months since ChatGPT was launched on the world. Like every other transformative technology shift, it’s already prompting leaders to question how they do everything from drug discovery and investing to talent management and partnerships. And yet unemployment rates remain near a 50-year low as employers struggle to find and retain the talent they need to get ahead of the next wave in work.



That’s prompting a move towards skills-based hiring, experimentation with AI and other themes that we explored at our<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesliveteam/2023/04/24/2023-forbes-future-of-work-summit-work-disrupted/?sh=6b5d7a007f6e">&nbsp;Future of Work Summit</a>&nbsp;last week. Here is a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmylucas/2023/06/01/2023-forbes-future-of-work-summit/?sh=7587326c48d7">summary of highlights from the event</a>, courtesy of Emmy Lucas, and a shout-out to Jena McGregor for creating such a thought-provoking event.



On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to hear from experts at McKinsey about what they’re seeing and doing in this realm at their annual media day. The management consultancy has faced plenty of challenges in the past few years—from paying hefty fines over its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/02/04/reports-mckinsey-has-reached-573-million-settlement-with-states-for-its-role-in-marketing-opioid-drugs/?sh=3f644e1065d1">role in marketing opioid drugs</a>&nbsp;to an embarrassing lack of diversity in its senior ranks. (Full Disclosure: I worked there in 2020.)



And yet McKinsey remains<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniefillion/2022/08/10/meet-the-worlds-best-management-consulting-firms-2022/?sh=28cea78a2888">&nbsp;the advisor of choice</a>&nbsp;for many of the world’s top leaders, having built a deep bench of expertise in areas like sustainability, organizational health, growth strategies and digital transformation. More than a million people applied for 10,000 jobs last year. What’s more, some among that top 1 percent didn’t come in with traditional four-year degrees—reflecting what chief people officer Katy George describes as a shift towards hiring for potential vs. pedigree. “We used to be the stewards of jobs,” says George. “Now, we are stewards of skills.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-ceo-shift-around-ai">The CEO Shift Around AI</h3>



Among the most coveted of skills, of course, is the ability to understand and leverage ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI. Alex Singla, a senior partner and global leader of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/how-we-help-clients" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey</a>, said that conversations with CEOs have shifted over the past several weeks. Gone are the requests for explanations of how the technology works — and whether it’s over-hyped. Now, Singla says, five questions dominate:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>What are the specific use cases?</li>
</ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>How do I get started?</li>



<li>What are the risks I need to manage?</li>



<li>What are the implications for present and future employees?</li>



<li>How do I learn fast?</li>
</ul>



The automation that McKinsey had previously predicted would take effect by 2040 has now moved up to 2030. The winners will be those who move fast and quickly figure out how to integrate these new technologies into their IT stacks and work flows, and reimagine how they manage talent and design their operating model as a result.



Jacky Wright, a former chief digital officer of Microsoft US who became McKinsey’s first chief technology &amp; platform officer last fall, also notes that generative AI is already creating new roles around risk and prompting forward-thinking companies to constantly iterate existing job descriptions.



Junior analysts, for example, will no longer need to spend most of their time gathering research, preparing pitch decks and creating content that synthesizes the data. Their focus is instead shifting to more value-added tasks.



Senior Partner Ben Ellencweig of QuantumBlack, in true McKinsey fashion, distills AI’s current impact to four Cs:&nbsp;coding&nbsp;(AI-generated suggestions are already generating productivity gains of up to 55%s),&nbsp;customer engagment&nbsp;(suggesting more personalized ways to engage customers),&nbsp;creative content generation&nbsp;(especially in marketing) and&nbsp;content synthesis&nbsp;(essentially connecting the dots). “All the mundane tasks go away,” he says. “It’s about change management &#8230; just moving at a lightning speed.”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/what-every-ceo-should-know-about-generative-ai" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Here’s a report</a>&nbsp;that QuantumBlack produced on what CEOs need to know about generative AI,



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-productivity-paradox">The Productivity Paradox</h3>



The current job market is both confounding and heartening to Anu Madgavkar, a McKinsey Global Institute partner who leads global research focused on labor markets and talent trends. Despite economic headwinds, people continue to switch jobs, work schedules and industries, helping job openings go up. That points to resilience and reasons for optimism, in her view. A key lever to keep the momentum going is to accelerate productivity growth, which now lags historical averages. Correcting that could add $10 trillion to US GDP,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/rekindling-us-productivity-for-a-new-era#at-a-glance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">by McKinsey’s calculations</a>.



While technology has the power to accelerate productivity gains, it’s not the only ingredient. Labor mobility, regulations, hiring practices and other factors also play into productivity. About three-quarters of of open job descriptions still ask for a four-year degree but 13 states have removed that criteria as a prerequisite in applying for public-sector roles and momentum is building for a more skills-based approach. As an example, Scott Blackburn, a senior partner &amp; global co-leader of the McKinsey Center for Government pointed out how infantry soldiers are extensively trained in many of the skills needed in managing corporate risk.



Asutosh Padhi, McKinsey’s managing partner for North America, argues that “productivity is the only solution” for America’s continued prosperity. “How do we pay for the energy transition?,” he asked. “It all comes down to productivity at the state level, the sector level.”



And yet, as senior partner Olivia White of The McKinsey Global Institute noted, U.S. productivity gains have halved to an annual rate of 1.1% over the last 15 years. Moreover, those figures vary widely across the country. She cited seven states that were outperforming in terms of gains: North Dakota, California, New York, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington. Many more are underperforming, she notes, creating a productivity gap that will only exacerbate the country’s regional divide.



Ezra Greenberg, a partner and global leader in overseeing macro scenarios and trends for the firm, has one piece of advice that almost every company can follow: “Keep your Baby Boomers.” Their institutional knowledge and ability to mentor younger generations could prove to be priceless in the coming years. For Boomers, that could be a recipe to work less and get paid more — if they adapt to new technologies and reimagine their own roles, too.

Category: Business